Staff Reports
The Swain High School varsity Maroon Devils soccer team traveled to Murphy on Monday night to take on the Murphy Bulldogs for the first conference game of the season. The Devil defense stepped up to deliver a 1-0 shutout against the Bulldogs.
“We knew it was going to be a hard game playing a very talented Murphy team,” said Head Coach Kyndall Cochran. The game kicked off at 6 p.m. after the Swain Middle School soccer team played a hard-fought game.
With seven minutes left in the first half, Maroon Devil Mason Moore dribbled the box into the 18-yard box for a cross, it hit off a Bulldog towards Clayton Shuler, who took a hard shot while being fouled. Evan Hall cleaned it up by tapping it past the Bulldog keeper.
On the defensive half, Brendan Lanning dropped back halfway through the first half to lead the Devils in steals with 13. Max Lanning added 12 steals and Cristobal De La Cruz had eight.
In goal, Matthew Evans had eight saves and got his team the first shutout of the season.
The player of the game is Evan Hall.
“If I could give the whole team player of the game I would. This win took the whole team and played as a unit, said Coach Cochran.
Swain is currently on top of the conference and the team is ambitious to hold onto the top spot.
“With our team coming off of non-conference games, we prepared exactly how we wanted to,” Coach Cochran said. “We grew from each game and saw what we needed to do to help us in conference. Swain is a very talented group this year, and we believe we can capitalize on it.”
The win takes Swain to 2-4-1 on the season. The Maroon Devils were on the road Wednesday (after press) against Blue Ridge Early College.