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    PHOTO BY A.L. SHAFF/WIMBERLEY VIEW Defender Brayan Ramos goes for the ball against a Liberty Hill player in last Friday’s district game at Burnet. The game went to two overtime periods before Liberty Hill won 2-0.
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    PHOTO BY A.L. SHAFF Texan Jack Cole goes airborne as the Liberty Hill defender knocks the ball from his feet with a sliding tackle. The game took two halves and two ten-minute overtimes before Liberty Hill won 2-0.

Season ends in double overtime

Wimberley’s boys soccer team almost did the impossible last Friday night at Burnet when they played Liberty Hill for a chance to advance to the next level. Twice before this season the Texans had challenged the powerful soccer machine from Liberty Hill High School and twice they were beaten. This time it took the Panthers 80 minutes of regulation time then to two overtime periods and penalty kicks before they ended the Texans’ season with two penalty scores. Liberty Hill 2, Texans 0.

“Our goal at the start of the season was to still be playing soccer in April,” Coach Ramez Antoun said after the game. “We came up just seven minutes from making that goal!”

On overly-warm Spring evening, the two teams went at each other like maddened bulls fighting for the right to rule the ring. The Panthers appeared to score early in the first period but the referee denied the goal on an offside call. Liberty Hill 0/Wimberley 0 and the teams played on.

“We knew going into the game that we would need to defend and counter attack,” Antoun commented after the game. “We knew that they were faster than us. And we knew they had a couple of players we had a tough time wrangling in. Their number ten is so good that we had to cover him with one player so that left us with a man short for our offensive play. We knew we couldn’t play the usual possession style attack we’d played the rest of the year.”

But the game turned into a classic defensive struggle as neither team could mount effective charges or smooth passing. Shot after shot from both elevens ended up wide or in the keepers’ hands and no score as time ticked away.

In what some thought a loosely-called game, the referee called few fouls and let the teams go at each other with power. Asked if the Texan players seemed bothered by the rough play, Coach Antoun answered, “It was the same for both teams. While it was rough, it didn’t seem as if anyone was trying to intentionally injure opponents.”

As regulation time ended at 0-0, the teams went to two ten minute overtimes. After those two periods, the score still stood 0-0 and moved the game to the penalty kick stage. The Texans failed to score their penalty kicks while the Panthers scored twice and that was enough to send them on to more games this season and the Texans knowing they had played hard and they had played well. They almost did the impossible.

Wimberley View

P.O. Box 49
Wimberley, TX 78676
Phone: 512-847-2202
Fax: 512-847-9054