The Long County Blue Tide soccer season is off to a hot start as both the girls and boys teams have won two straight games. Their hot streak consisted of them rolling past Region 2-AAA opponent Brantley County on Friday, Feb 22 in their first home game of the year.
The Lady Tide, who look to contend for a region championship in 2019, got off to a hot start against the Herons in the first half as sophomore Madison Giron scored two goals and juniors Destiny Rosas and Ainsley Dawson each put one in. The girls went into halftime leading 4-0, but the Herons did not give up easily in the second half.
Brantley County closed the gap in the second half as they scored the first two goals of the half and made it a 4-2 deficit with 20 minutes left in the contest. The next five minutes were exciting for the crowd at Veterans’ Stadium as there were four goals scored.
Sophomore Trista Murphy added one goal for the Lady Tide while Dawson scored her second of the night which helped push the home team to a 7-3 victory to move to 2-1 and 1-0 in the region.
The boys had equal success on the night as assistant coach Cory Brace stepped up in place of head coach Michael Austin who could not be at the game due to an emergency. It was all Blue Tide from the opening kick ball.
The Tide got off to a hot start as freshman Gael Franco zipped down the pitch and found himself putting in a goal early on. Franco was coming off a huge showing in the team’s last game as he recorded a hat trick against Wayne County.
With an early 1-0 lead, the Tide continued their dominance as Franco put in a second goal to give his team a 2-0 lead. Long County kept on rolling in the first half as junior Kevin Tooley added a goal to put the team up 3-0 late in the first half.
Franco did something that is usually unseen as he added a third goal in the first half to give him his second straight hat trick. The Tide added one more goal in the first half to take 5-0 lead into the break.
With a comfortable five-goal lead, the boys seemed to relax and pull back the reins. They finished the game with their 5-0 halftime lead to move to 2-0-1 and 1-0 in the region.
The Blue Tide teams were back in action on Tuesday, Feb 26 against Appling County and will host Pierce County on Friday, March 1.