Boys soccer: Elyria Catholic storms past Amherst in season opener

ELYRIA — Nelson Perez gave Elyria Catholic's season-opening 5-1 win over Amherst a passing grade. "You have to give a lot of credit to our coaches," said Perez as everyone headed quickly to their cars and buses when lightning halted the game with 5:23 still to play Friday night. "They've been coaching us all offseason long. They've pushed us through the hard times. This group is a great group of guys." The junior midfielder scored the first goal just three and a half minutes into the game and later had a nice assist when he passed forward to Elijah Mvere to push EC's lead to 3-0 early in the second half. Mvere scored twice for the Panthers, getting his first goal with just 4:26 left in the first half to give EC a 2-0 lead. His second goal led off the second half on Perez's pass in front with 28 minutes to play. Senior Jordan Ramos assisted on both of EC's first-half goals. In the second half, Cole Varndell equaled Perez's effort with an assist on Brayden Van Dyke's goal in front with 21:41 remaining and then scored less than a minutes later off a nice pass on the left side from Hezekiah Garcia to make it 5-0 with 20:48 to play. Elyria Catholic's superior foot skills proved to be Amherst's undoing. The Comets did have three golden opportunities to score with about 18 minutes left in the first half but misfired on all three attempts.The first one off the foot of sophomore Matthew Hammond sailed to the right of the goal. Two other attempts sailed high over EC goalkeeper Carson Bandaski's head. Amherst finally did score on a short shot in front by Gavin Taliano with 14:42 to play. He beat EC backup goalkeeper Jeremiah Walther, who came on to relieve Bandaski with 15 minutes to play. Neither EC coach Tony Csiszar or Amherst coach Brett Thompson were available for comment after the game as both were hurriedly getting their teams to safety when the lightning started. "We're not going to stop here, we're going to keep going," Perez said. "We've been working in practice on moving the ball and using our foot skills inside. We don't play selfishly." Contact Tim Gebhardt at (440) 329-7135 or timothygeb@msn.com. Elyria Catholic 5, Amherst 1 GOALS: (EC) Nelson Perez, Elijah Mvere (2), Brayden Van Dyke, Cole Varndell; (A) Gavin Taliano ASSISTS: (EC) Jordan Ramos (2), Perez, Varndell, Hezekiah Garcia SHOTS: Elyria Catholic 9, Amherst 10 SAVES: (EC) Carson Bandaski 4; (A) Jonathon Janosik 7 CORNER KICKS: Elyria Catholic 1, Amherst 1 FREE KICKS: Elyria Catholic 6, Amherst 8 PENALTY KICKS: Elyria Catholic 1 HALFTIME: Elyria Catholic, 2-0