GRANITE CITY – It’s always nice to break in a new (in this case improved) field with a win, and that’s exactly what the Granite City Warriors boys soccer team did Monday night.
They hosted the Waterloo Bulldogs on the newly turfed Gene Baker Field and came out with a competitive 1-0 win, improving to 3-0 on the season.
The team is looking leaps and bounds better than last year’s 2-11-1 campaign, and 2022’s 5-13-1 run.
“We’ve kind of been building toward this,” Warriors head coach Ryan Reeves said after the win over Waterloo. “We have a lot of seniors, and they took their lumps their sophomore year and their junior year.”
Granite took on and defeated Jerseyville 3-0 and St. Mary’s 7-1 to start the season in the Alton Redbird Kickoff Tournament to have their best start since the pandemic and the Warriors continued that momentum into Monday night.
Things didn’t immediately go Granite’s way though. After a defensive giveaway, the Bulldogs pounced on the ball and challenged Warriors goalkeeper Tyler Lakin within the opening 60 seconds.
From then on it was mainly Granite City in the first half.
Armando Hernandez showed some great individual skill throughout the night, beginning with a breakaway attempt in the sixth minute, one that Waterloo keeper Parker Lacroix had to get involved in, rushing out to stop Hernandez in his tracks.
Hernandez would find the back of the net in the 20th minute. He took a ball midstride right inside the 18-yard box, split the defense, rolled the ball right past the onrushing Lacroix, and slotted the ball home into an empty net to make it 1-0.
It was his sixth goal in the opening three games of the season.
“He’s one of the better players in the area,” Reeves said about Hernandez, who scored a team-high nine goals last year.
“Unfortunately, the last couple of years he hasn’t really been able to show it because we’ve just been lacking from the personal standpoint. All good players need good players to play with to make them look even better than they are. Right now we’re finding him in good spots,” Reeves added.
It’s a well-timed result for Granite after getting smacked 5-0 in last year’s meeting with the Bulldogs. Waterloo finished the season with an 18-5 record but since lost 10 seniors from that team.
“Huge result for a team that manhandled us last year both physically and technically,” Reeves said.
“But you know what, we’re growing, we’re getting better, it’s just disappointing that it ended the way it did as far as our composure. We’re going to get better from that. Like I said, they might not know how to win and win gracefully. Hopefully, they’ll get an opportunity to do that a lot this year, but we’ll see how it goes.”
What Reeves is referring to is what was a chirpy second half.
He saw his team receive four yellow cards and a red in the final minutes as the Warriors and Bulldogs were not getting along.
“We lost our composure tonight, which was unfortunate,” Reeves said. “You can’t get a big win like that and turn a positive into a negative with four yellow cards. We had a kid show a little too much emotion at the end of the game, got caught up in stuff, and got a red card, so we’re going to be a man short tomorrow.”
The Warriors will have to figure it out and learn how to keep their composure because an IHSA rule says that no team with 25 or more yellow cards accumulated throughout the regular season may compete in the playoffs.
They’ll also be without that player for tonight’s matchup against Highland, back on the new turf at 6:30 p.m.
The yellows were affecting Granite’s play on the field more importantly.
“Took a couple of yellows back-to-back and just fell out of sorts,” Reeves said.
Waterloo had many chances in the second half, but none that really worried Lakin and the defense.
“[Waterloo] probably had two of the better players on the field tonight, but we were able to defend when we needed to defend, Reeves said. “I thought we were the better team with the ball in the first 60 minutes and then we kind of lost our composure.”
At the time, the result may have been overshadowed by the card accumulation, but in the end, a win’s a win, and the Warriors plan on getting many more of them.
“This team just needs to learn how to win,” Reeves said, “and right now we’re in the process of doing that.”
