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Show 'Cats, Braves storm past inter-region toes "We had a lot of rough edges," said WX coach Kevin Rigby, "and were not as smooth as we wanted to be. The score could easily have been 8 or 10 to nothing." He agreed the match compared to last weeks win over West, when his team was saddled with 'bad luck,' but still won. With the win, the 'Cats ran their season record to 14-2-1 and will meet Region 6 foe Jordan on Tuesday Tues-day at 7 p.m. On Tuesday, WX destroyed visiting Granite 10-1, as forwardhalfback Troy Stones and striker Corby Eg an each assaulted the Fanners with three goals. Forward For-ward Jason Child, halfbacks Shane Hockum and Danny Morris and forwardhalfback B.J. Leonard contributed con-tributed one goal apiece. In allowing only their fourth goal in region play, the 'Cats ended league play undefeated at 13-0-1. the ball around, but Thursday we were executing some pinpoint passes and getting back to basics. 'There's a saying in England where I grew up bread and butter before cake. We've been trying to do too much cake." Now, with only eight teams left in the 3A title hunt, five are from Region 6; and the top two, Bountiful Boun-tiful and Woods Cross, are, of course, from Davis County. "The only way to ensure that a Davis County school wins the championship is to make sure both teams in the finals are from Davis County,' Wigham said, looking forward to a hopeful meeting with cross-town rival Woods Cross in the finals. The two teams have met twice this season. In their first encounter, the Braves and 'Cats ended deadlocked at 0; Woods Cross won the second bout by a two-goal margin. By G.BRETT HART Sports Editor BOUNTIFUL The Bountiful Braves have a couple of scores to settle with their 3A soccer foes in the state tournament this year. First (and foremost), after being eliminated in the first round of the state tournament last season by Sky View, the Braves are out to prove they were, and are, a better team than that unfortunate incident indicated. in-dicated. Second, last season was the first in 10 years that a non-Davis County school walked away with the championship cham-pionship trophy Bountiful coach Dave Wigham and his team are dead-set on not letting that happen again. Thursday afternoon at Millcreek Junior High School, the Braves took the first step in realizing their goal. Bountiful downed Lehi 3-1 to move into the single elimination tourney at Clearfield High School, as did four other Region 6 soccer teams. In Thursday's bout, Bountiful senior Jason Has lam put the Braves on the board in first half action. Just before the half, Sean Colton added a goal to put Region 6's number two team up 2-0. Finally, Brandon Stock logged the final Bountiful goal, giving his team a 3-0 lead. From there, the Braves substituted heavily, allowing their Utah County opponents a chance to get on the board. Lehi finally scored in the waning minutes of the game on a controversial, controver-sial, indirect penalty kick. "I was really pleased with the way we played against Lehi. We got back to fundamentals," Wigham explained. "Lately, we've just been kicking , i - - V , j r -' n w- m - )' I o ' 1 - r 4 1 '-'.-; J 2 - . - I I Bountiful's Jason Haslam winds up to drill this shot on goal against Lehi Thursday. The shot hit the goal post and bounced I back into play. . . The WX JV team did not play against Granite, thus ending its season last week. Thursday's game pitted Region 6 champion WX against Region 5s fifth-place Tigers, who finished 8-10 overall. As with several of the 'Cats games this season, WX took charge in the second half. It was a good, old-fashioned cat fight. Halfback Matt Cosper put the home team up 1-0 mid-way through the first half, as he took a push pass on a fast break from striker Corby Egan. Cosper kicked the ball to the right side of the net past the diving goalie, who seemed to anticipate a left-side kick. WX spent the remainder of the period frustrating itself with offensive turnovers and missed shots-on-goal. Obviously, Ogden had something to do with it, as the Tigers stole the ball several times and deflected many passes and goal attempts. But the visitors also had a propensity to kick the ball out-of-bounds, which coincided with their inability to do anything offensively. 'The (tempo) was hard for us to control, because Ogden did not even try to control it themselves," said Rigby. Their game plan seemed seem-ed to be "hit-and-run and we looked look-ed like them by half . " The momentum changed hands rather dramatically in the second half. WX made a few steals and offensively pounded the ball inside more. The assertiveness paid off as Egan scored on a penalty kick to double the 'Cats lead to 2-0. . ' Egan scored again moments later, ' when he out-ran two defenders and nailed another insurance goal for the final score. ( On Tuesday, the 'Cats face a Jordan Jor-dan Beetdigger team it has already . shut out twice this year, 2-0 and 4-0. We are looking forward to our 14th consecutive appearance in the final eight" at the state tournament, tourna-ment, said Rigby. 49 i 1 ? v ' ill J I . i . I didn't think our region was that strong," Wigham said. "But I guess it is." Murray, the region's fifth place team, upset region champion Springville, while Tooele lost to Region 5 champion Ben Lomond on a post-overtime shootout. In fact, the only non-Region 6 teams left in the tourney are from Region 5: Ben Lomond, Sky View and Logan. The Braves will journey to Clearfield Clear-field High School to take on region rival Judgea team Bountiful has beaten twice already this season. We've harped on attitude all week,' ' Wigham explained, remembering re-membering how underestimating Sky View the year before had knocked the Braves out of the tournament tour-nament "When I told the kids that we would be playing Judge, no one made any reference to beating them twice before. The seniors know anything can happen. We're going into this game as if we'd never played them before." The Braves will enter the single-elimination single-elimination tournament relatively healmy--minus senior halfback Jeremy Botelho, who has had to watch from the sidelines for six weeks with a broken leg. "We miss him," Wigham explained. ex-plained. "We'd be a better team if he were in there. 1 :t ' " WX 3, OGDEN O WOODS CROSS After shaking off a bit of deja vu, the Woods Cross Wildcats settled down to defeat the visiting Ogden Tigers 3-0 in an inter-region soccer playoff Thursday and advance to next week's 3A state soccer tournament in Clearfield. The Wildcats had survived an intense "cat fight" Thursday holding the Ogden Tigers scoreless during the inter-region duel. |