DesotoExplorer.com

It took about 30 minutes for De Soto to utilize its team speed to score a goal Tuesday night. But after that, De Soto steadily wore down Louisburg and De Soto won, 4-0.

“The first half I thought we controlled them for the most part,” De Soto coach Darren Erpelding said. “We started a little bit slow but we still controlled the game.”

Alex Henning scored De Soto’s first goal of the night, that shot coming off a pass from Brett Hevel to Paul Oswald who kicked it to Henning. Oswald scored De Soto’s second and final goal of the half off an assist by Tyler Buffkin with :35 left in the half.

But for the first 10 minutes of the second frame, Louisburg showed it also had some speed on the pitch and drove the ball to De Soto’s goal numerous times.

On one possession, Louisburg pushed the ball up field from the left side and got De Soto goalie Tyler Phongsavath out of position. Louisburg put up a shot but the ball doinked off the post and Louisburg never recovered.

“You could just kind of see it on their faces,” Erpelding said. “They just deflated; they gave everything and they were exhausted. And then we were able to take advantage.”

Oswald scored again with seven minutes to play off a Jordan Riffel pass to Hevel, who then assisted Oswald.

“That’s something we work on every single day,” Erpelding said. “Don’t let the ball stop, and if they do they get punished for it. It’s getting better and hopefully within the next week or so it’ll get even better.

“When we’re moving them with our speed on that and they’re just following the ball and we hit them vertically with our speed, it makes it very tough to defend.”

And Duncan Henderson scored off a penalty kick with 3:05 to go to push De Soto’s lead to 4-0.

The Wildcats are now 11-1-1 on the season.

“It’s been a good year,” Oswald said. “We’ve got Eudora and Gardner coming up and then Baldwin, so some tough games yet, but we’ll get through it.”

Erpelding said his team hadn’t played its best ball of the season yet.

“We’re not quite there yet,” he said. “We still have some kinks we’re getting worked out, but we’re getting there.”