Canton Soccer Dominates Mansfield 4-0

The dominated the Mansfield High Hornets Friday to pick up their second win in a row. Canton improved its record to 2-0-2 while Mansfield fell to 0-1-2.

Canton’s coach, Danny Erickson, said the key to victory was to “play physical, we’ve got a lot of respect for them [Mansfield], we’ve got to play tough.”

The Bulldog players must have received that message loud and clear. They outplayed Mansfield in every aspect of the game. They out-hustled, over-powered, and outscored the Hornets.

Senior Matt Malloy struck first early in the first half for Canton High to give them the 1-0 lead. Shortly thereafter, senior captain Scott Levy added a second goal in the first half. The whistle blew at half-time leaving the Bulldogs with a 2-0 advantage.

Mansfield’s coach, Steve Sheridan, said before the game that “we can’t make any mistakes and we have to play tight in our own end, we’ve made a few mistakes before that have cost us in the end.”

However, the Hornets couldn’t fight off the Bulldogs, who just kept bringing the pressure in the second half. It seemed as if the ball stayed on Mansfield’s defensive end for 10 straight minutes before Canton netted their third goal by junior Matt Lennon. About two minutes later, sophomore Sam Larson added the fourth and final goal of the game.

The Canton Bulldogs played as flawless a game as possible. They went out, played hard, stayed physical, and earned the victory over Mansfield to keep their loss column at zero.

Coach Erickson was impressed and proud of the way his team played on the field. He told the Patch that the key to this win was that, “we played hard start to finish, we played a great game, and we controlled the game. We came out on top.”