On Thursday evening the Elizabethton Cyclones boys soccer team hosted 11th ranked Dobyns-Bennett at Citizens Bank Stadium.

Despite a solid defensive effort from the Cyclones, the Indians scored a 4-nil victory to hand EHS (5-1, 2-0 conference) its first loss of the season.

“Technically, man-for-man they are better than us,” Cyclones head coach Bill McClay said. “We know that when we schedule these guys. That’s as good as I can remember them being. I thought we did pretty well, but there were a couple of things I wish we would have done like switch the ball better when we had the opportunity, especially early in the game before we got worn down a bit.”

The match was scoreless for six minutes, but in the seventh-minute junior defender Carter Swinney converted a pass from Will Arrowood into a goal as he fired a low shot past EHS goalkeeper Noah Lambert.

EHS had an opportunity for a goal in the first half when a penalty on D-B gave the Cyclones a direct kick from 15 yards out. Senior Luke Bernshausen fired a high blast at Indians keeper Jacob Park who made a fingertip save and held on as he went to the turf.

Until the 32nd minute the Cyclones held the match at 1-nil but D-B’s Sam Garcia scored the first of his two goals with an assist from Jack Perry as the Tribe took a 2-nil advantage into the break.

EHS managed just two shots on goal in the first half as the Indians defenders were able to keep the Cyclones from playing the ball long, while they did that successfully.

“We got caught dribbling the ball. We had an opportunity where we had the ball in good position, but no one ran ahead of the ball,” McClay said. “Nobody was willing to go forward and some of that is when you know the ball is coming back at you that fast. When you give a team like that a half a yard…boom, the ball is gone. They pinned our fullback’s back and I don’t know that there was anything else we could have done.”

Garcia scored again in the 48th minute on a failure to clear the ball from the penalty area that resulted in the ball finding Garcia’s foot just 15 feet from Lambert and he didn’t miss his opportunity.

In the 58th minute, Arrowood tallied a goal with an assist from Garcia to make the final score of 4-nil.

Dobyns-Bennett 4-0

D-B 2 2 – 4

EHS 0 0 – 0

Scoring summary

First Half

D-B – Swinney (assist Arrowood) 7:00

D-B – Garcia (assist Perry) 32:00

Second Half

D-B – Garcia (unassisted) 48:00

D-B – Arrowood (assist Garcia) 58:00