Dowagiac blanks Brandywine in battle of ranked teams

Published 7:15 am Wednesday, September 1, 2021

By Scott Novak

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DOWAGIAC — A battle between two top 10-ranked Division 3 soccer teams turned out to be a one-sided affair Tuesday.

Host Dowagiac, ranked No. 4, scored eight goals in the opening 40 minutes of its non-conference match with No. 8-ranked Brandywine to earn the victory and improve to 3-1 on the year.

Issac Seevedra had a pair of goals for the Chieftains, who were able to take advantage of a short-handed Bobcat squad. Dowagiac was also able to control the ball better than Brandywine could, according to Coach Caleb Adams.

“We still have some injuries that we are dealing with,” he said. “That only left us with two subs. We wanted to control the ball better than we did. Dowagiac does a nice job controlling it with their athletes.”

Konnor Voss put the Chieftains on the board first off an assist from Noah Green, who would also score a goal in the match. Dowagiac also got a pair of goals from Cole Weller, while Ethan Hannapel and Chase Morse found the back of the net.

Chieftain Coach Mike Williams said his team was able to work on some things during the match to prepare for the upcoming Wolverine Conference season.

“Saturday, we played really well,” he said. “Last week in our opener, we did not play well. We have been working hard in practice on winning balls and just continuous movement. We also want to increase the speed because we have a lot of veteran players who know what to do. We just have to get going. The goal was to do what we did today, which usually doesn’t happen. We are feeding the forwards, who are turning out and feeding the mids [midfielders] and putting it back across. So, we are going in and back out and then back in. We did that over and over again.”

The Chieftains finished with 20 shots on goal compared to two for the Bobcats. The best scoring opportunity came late in the first half when Andrew Schadler beat the Dowagiac defense to a loose ball and had Chieftain goalkeeper Alejandro Martinez out of position, but shot the ball over the top of the net.

Martinez finished with two saves.

Dowagiac returns to action Thursday as it hosts Constantine in a non-conference match. Play is scheduled to begin at 5:45 p.m.

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