By TIM IRVING
For 65 minutes, Hornell’s boys soccer team controlled play in the Class B1 final against Palmyra-Macedon with nothing to show for it.
“At the half, the guys were a little bit…down I would say. A little bit after one another. We felt that we were playing well enough in the first that if we just kept playing like that, things would work out, “ Red Raiders coach Jim Tobin said after his team scored twice in a seven-minute span to beat Pal-Mac 2-0 for the Class B1 title.
Hornell had a couple of good chances in the first half but Pal-Mac senior keeper Robert Kinsman made a couple of huge stops to leave the game scoreless at half.
In the second half, sophomore Jack Emo got free but Kinsman got a foot on it to keep the clean sheet a bit longer.
With 15 minutes left, a ball was centered for Shawn Rose in the Pal-Mac defensive zone and he was knocked down, the official awarding a penalty kick for the infraction. Liam Khork hit the resulting kick inside the left post for a 1-0 Hornell lead.
Seven minutes later, Emo fired a left-footed shot that Kinsman dove for. It bounced off the cross bar and spun off his back, sitting right next to the goal line where Rose knocked it in.
It is the first boys’ soccer title for the Red Raiders since 2010 which, ironically, the Red Raiders shared with Bath-Haverling, who they will now meet in Tuesday’s regional qualifier.
Tobin said, “We knew we had a really talented group here and we felt we had a good shot to achieve this goal and we’re really happy, happy for the seniors, happy for the whole Hornell soccer community.”
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