Washington soccer clinches second-consecutive EPC championship

Published 1:23 pm Friday, October 17, 2014

DAVID CUCCHIARA | DAILY NEWS CHAMPIONSHIP FORM: Head coach Jim Kozuch talks to his team prior to the team’s final regular season game against North Pitt.

DAVID CUCCHIARA | DAILY NEWS
CHAMPIONSHIP FORM: Head coach Jim Kozuch talks to his team prior to the team’s final regular season game against North Pitt.

It didn’t go exactly as planned, the Washington soccer team veering from its eventual and seemingly inevitable goal on multiple occasions throughout the season, but for the second-straight fall, head coach Jim Kozuch and the Pam Pack find themselves at the top of the Eastern Plains Conference.

Bitten by the injury bug early, improvisation became an all too familiar concept to a team unaccustomed to losing in Class 2-A. After leading the Greenville 7-on-7 high school summer league in scoring, senior captain Lupe Barrera’s slow start only got worse as he fought through an assortment of minor injuries, which sidelined him for two-plus weeks. Junior goalie William Tate and defender Gabriel Valle-Torres, two key pieces of the starting lineup, also spent some time on the sideline due to injury this season.

“We’re obviously very excited to win the conference again,” Kozuch said. “We came out and started the season slow, but we came back and made a lot of changes, found some new positions and created a lot of chemistry.”

Whether it was Jose Corona or Miguel Hernandez in the midfield or Dylan Singleton and Weston Brown on defense, Kozuch found the necessary production to compensate for injuries just about every night. And the formation was adjusted accordingly, Kozuch doing whatever it took to scrape out a win.

“I think because of all the injuries, it was a good chance to get a look at some of the other players on the roster and we were able to find guys,” Kozuch said. “I think is what it did in the long term was create depth for us. Towards the end of the year it was a great problem to have, having 12-13 guys who could start for us.”

With 11 days until the playoffs and Barrera back to his goal-scoring form, Washington finds itself in perfect position to make another deep run — the roster fully healthy, the formation set and everyone comfortable with their roles in the starting 11.

On Thursday, following a huge 7-1 win over second-place North Pitt, the Pam Pack locked up the conference in style, knocking off Southwest Edgecombe, 9-0.

Senior Kyle Hodges added to his historic season with two goals, while Barrera, Ben McKeithan, Sergio Higuera, Gabriel Valle-Torres, Miguel Hernandez, William Page and even the goalie William Tate all made appearances in the scoring column.

“I really liked what we saw yesterday, a lot of energy and excitement,” Kozuch said. “We thought we had enough to take them, but we wanted to be sure we still moved the ball around well and played like a team. We were able to accomplish that early and gets some guys in different positions.”

Despite locking up the conference title, Washington isn’t backing down. Kozuch plans on fielding his regular starting lineup in next Tuesday against North Johnston, a team that gave the Pam Pack some trouble earlier in the season in a 1-0 win.

“We’re looking to get a little redemption against north Johnson,” Kozuch said. “We want to really take it to them this time. We want to come out them and shock them, put some goals on the board.”

Whatever the result of that match, the Pam Pack has locked up home field advantage through the early round of the 2-A state playoffs.