Bearcats earn clean sheet against Benbrook

With the fog bearing down, Harrison Hobbs dribbles the ball as a pair of Benbrook defenders close in.

In their final match before starting district play on Friday at Wichita Falls Rider, the Aledo Bearcats varsity soccer team made sure the only thing thicker than the fog looming over Tim Buchanan Stadium was their offensive pressure. 

Aledo scored four goals while goalkeeper Deagan Dietz earned his fifth clean sheet of the season as the Bearcats improved their overall record to 9-0-2 on Tuesday, Jan. 23.

The Bearcats take their undefeated record on the road to open up District 5-5A action against a Raiders squad currently riding a three-match win streak.

With a heavy mist covering the field and Benbrook arriving late to the match, Aledo got off to a rough start. The Bearcats struggled to maintain possession of the ball, as errand passes and sloppy defensive play allowed the Bobcats to make it a back-and-forth affair throughout much of the first half. 

Aledo managed to put some space between themselves and the visiting Bobcats when Adam Arevett scored the opening goal of the night part way through the first half.

Up by a score and able to relax a little, the Bearcats began to find their rhythm late in the first half. They appeared to find the net for the second Aledo score of the night. However, an offsides call negated the score. 

Minutes later they again narrowly missed going up by a pair of goals. Despite a clean look at the goal from the far side about 20 yards out, a sweeping shot at the top shelf of the goal sailed just over the crossbar, keeping the home-team advantage to just a single goal as the end of the first half drew near.

“We had to tell them to calm down,” Bearcats head coach Derek Vierling said after the match. “They were a little antsy at the start of the game. showed up at 6:20. We were supposed to start at 6. We started our warm-up. Then they called and said their bus wasn’t coming, so we stopped our warmup. It’s something need to learn from. But, it took us until the second half to calm down and figure it out.”

And figure it out, they did.

Austin Randriamahefa sprints past Benbrook's defense. He went on to score a goal in the Bearcats 4-0 win on Tuesday, Jan. 23.

The Bearcats dominated the second half of play tacking on three goals with the Bobcats offering very little resistance. Trapper Davis buried a goal with just under 26 minutes left in regulation to put Aledo up 2-0. 

Minutes later the Bearcats again put pressure on the Bobcat keeper. With the ball still loose in front of the net, the Bearcats got off a follow-up attempt at the goal, but were denied once again as the ball ricocheted off the crossbar. The ball trickled just outside the penalty area where a rebound shot sailed just wide of the goal. 

For all the drama, Benbrook managed to escape unscathed.

From there, it appeared as though the Bobcats had run out of lives. Austin Randriamahefa sprinted by the Benbrook centerbacks and made a perfectly placed shot on the bottom far side of the goal just beyond the outstretched hands of the keeper. Randriamahefa’s goal put Aledo up 3-0 with 16:42 left to play.

The final score of the match for the Bearcats was arguably the best one of the night. Kaiden Hill worked the ball down the near touch line before firing a long shot into the box. Cole Crawford timed his release perfectly as not to be called offsides, snuck past his defender, and fired a wide-open shot on goal off the end of the pass to produce the final score.

“It was good,” Vierling said of his team’s performance post-match. “We got to play a lot of players. We start districts on Friday up at Rider, so it was good to get to rest some of those guys in the second half.”

In 2023, Rider finished district in second place behind Brewer while Aledo held onto the fourth place spot to earn a playoff berth. This season the Bearcats stand alone as the only unbeaten team in District 5-5A as the league season kicks off.

Friday’s match at Rider is slated for a 7:30 p.m. start.