The Brownwood Lions collected their fourth District 5-4A victory in a row, and have scored 20 goals in that span following Friday night’s 4-0 triumph over the China Spring Cougars at Gordon Wood Stadium, which capped a league sweep.
“Overall we’re pretty impressed and happy with this performance tonight,” said Lions head coach Michael Westerman. “Going into this game compared to the first time we played them there were a lot of things we needed to work on, a lot of challenges we had for the boys and we took those challenges on full stride.”
The Lions (10-9-1, 6-2), who defeated China Spring (1-15-1, 1-6) by a 3-0 count in the first meeting on Feb. 3, led 1-0 at halftime on a goal by Colton McMillan who emerged from a crowd in front of the net with 9:28 left in the opening half.
“Our halftime talk was about how we were pleased with how we were moving the ball around, the possession was good and the ball movement was good, but the challenge was who was going to step up and put the ball in the back of the net,” Westerman said.
Brownwood then erupted for three goals in a five-minute stretch early in the second half to put the game out of reach. Just 5:34 after halftime, Junior Martinez gave the Lions some breathing room with their second goal. Then 3:55 later, Caleb Nelson found the net for the third time for Brownwood. A 16 seconds after that, Noah Barron recorded his 11th goal in the last three outings and his 23rd of the season to round out the scoring with 30:15 left in the contest.
“We seem to a second half team, I don’t know what is, but we come out ready to play that second half,” Westerman said. “It was the first game we had the basketball guys in, two new midfielders that like to move the ball around and that open things up and creates space for other players. Noah was able to get on the score sheet again but it was good to have four different players step up and score goals is just tremendous because it is a full team effort.”
Third-place Brownwood is off Tuesday then it visits first-place Salado (13-2-3, 8-0 ) at 7 p.m. Friday, March 3 and welcomes second-place Stephenville (12-1-2, 7-1) at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 7.
