Damien Curtis

As the 2013 soccer season progresses, Tyler Consolidated’s varsity boys’ team seems to be seeing a progression of the level of competition of the teams they are going up against.

“We have some pretty tough teams on our schedule,” said head coach of the Knights, Scott Wall. “And we’re seeing a few of them here at the beginning of our season. Of course we’ll see a few teams coming up that are not as skilled, but for the most part, we still have some tough teams ahead of us that we need to be ready to face.”

The Silver Knights played host to Weir on Sept. 3 at Burgbacher Field in Middlebourne, facing off with a program that a soccer team at Consolidated has never defeated since soccer was instated at the school 11 years ago. Once again, though the two teams played equally fierce on the field, the Knights were not able to come away with the win.

“We tied, 3-3,” Wall said. “It wasn’t a win, it should have been, but it wasn’t. But it wasn’t a loss either though, and we’ll take that.”

Both teams volleyed the ball back and forth across the field all evening with the Silver and Black leading 3-1 at the end of the first half. In the second, the Red Riders came back to score a goal and a penalty kick to tie up the game. When the dust cleared, a card or two had been handed out and the two rival teams found themselves at an impasse, 3-3.

Mason Dawson

Senior Dylan Romine scored two goals for the home team and was credited with one assist on the day. Austin Souders scored one goal and had one assist; and Matthew Goudy assisted on a Romine goal.

At the net, Jonas Bach had 12 saves as the keeper.

“We used Jonas in the net for this game and put our regular keeper, Nathan Heintzman in the field,” the coach said. “Both did very well at their positions, but I don’t know that we’ll leave it this way.”

“Our defense did a good job and I think we played with confidence in this game. We still need to work on our communication though and our spacing.”

“Matthew Goudy and Dylan Romine played a solid game. Damien Curtis and Austin Souders also were on their game.”

On Sept. 5 at Linsly, the Silver Knights fell to a very skilled passing Cadet team, 4-0.

“We started out flat, that’s all I can say,” the coach said. “But we held them to 1-0 at the half. Linsly is a good team and they pass the ball extremely well.”

In the second half of the game, it can be said that the soccer ball didn’t exactly bounce Tyler’s way as two of the three goals scored by Linsly were unearned.

The Knights only took six shots at the Cadet net in the game and goalie Bach had eight saves.

“I’m not at all displeased with how we played, I just think we should have played a little tighter and taken advantage of some of the opportunities we were given,” Wall said.

“In fact, we had several kids step up and some come off the bench that played very well indeed for us. Jarrett LeMasters, Ryan Dalrymple, Quentin Richmond, Mason Dawson and others all came in and contributed to the effort.”

The Knights will do their best to add wins to their season record of 2-2-1 this week as they take on three teams who will not be push-overs. Consolidated made the trip to Parkersburg South on Tuesday; will host Wheeling Central on Thursday; and host Ravenswood on Saturday at 1 p.m.