LC advances to ODAC soccer semifinals

Lynchburg College dodged an early bullet from visiting Randolph College in the first round of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference’s men’s soccer tournament Saturday and went on to roll to an impressive 6-0 victory over the WildCats.

The third-seeded Hornets (14-2-2) advance to the semifinals, where LC will play second-seeded Hampden-Sydney at Hampden-Sydney on Wednesday. Lynchburg won the regular-season match with the Tigers, 2-1, in Farmville on Oct. 21. The game time will be determined.

“Before tonight’s game, the thought was this team is in our way (to winning the ODAC tournament),” said Lynchburg College coach Chris Yeager. “(RC) is tough. We know if we didn’t score early they were going to give us problems. So it was nice to get an early one. Because it can be tough to keep shooting and keep shooting and not finish. The pressure can get tighter and tighter.”

Randolph (6-9-4), the sixth seed, got the first good scoring chance just a couple of minutes into the match when Jonathan Bolton won a foot race to the ball near the top of the penalty area against the Hornets goal-keeper, Matt Sturdivant. Bolton chipped the ball over charging Sturdivant’s head, but the shot was wide by just inches.

It didn’t take long for the Hornets to take control after that near-miss.

LC’s first goal came in the 12th minute when Donald Hart III received a pass in the penalty area and turned on his defender to the left to get the ball on his right foot and fired a laser into the net to put Lynchburg up 1-0.

“Last year we lost to (LC) in overtime, but this year we were a much better team,” WildCats coach Bryan Waggoner said. “They scored an early goal and it kind of deflated us. It put us in a tough spot.”

Pat Brown, Shawn Bender and Shane Spanninger added first-half goals as the Hornets went into halftime up 4-0. Both Brown and Bender would score again in the second half. Josh Reed and Cam Smith (Jefferson Forest) had assists for LC. Lynchburg outshot the WildCats 17-8 and the Hornets had nine corner kicks to Randolph’s 2.

“(Hampden-Sydney) is a tough team and it was an absolute war the first time and I expect it to be again,” Yeager said. “We have to finish our chances and play a little better defense than last time.”

Despite Saturday’s loss Waggoner was pleased with the RC’s season, just the WildCats’ second.

“We are very happy with the year,” Waggoner said. “We are so young and it being just our second full year we still were able to finish above .500 in the ODAC. We ran into a very, very good Lynchburg College team tonight. We hope to be playing with the big guys, the Lynchburgs, the Roanokes and Virginia Wesleyans in the future, but it’s clear after today we still have some work to do. But, this is something we can use for next year because we return basically our whole team.”