If there were only 40 minutes in a soccer game, Liberty Christian would have beaten Wayne Country Day 2-1 on Tuesday evening.
But the Chargers played an impressive second half and walked away with a 4-3 win against Liberty Christian.
“This was night and day from our first game,” Wayne Country Day head coach Steve Ellis said. “We’ve done a lot of work to try and get our tempo up.
“They played well in this game.”
Liberty Christian came out hot to start the game and scored midway through the first half to take a 1-0 lead.
In the 25th minute, a Wayne Country Day player was red-carded, and the Chargers had to play with 10 players for the rest of the game.
However, the red card turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the Chargers.
In the 28th minute, Anthony Valentine broke free to tie the game 1-1, but the Heat scored right before halftime to take a 2-1 lead.
“Before we got the red card, I thought we were the better team,” Ellis said. “The red card was a little harsh, but we understand why the ref gave it. We tweaked a few things to settle us down and to nullify what they were doing.”
Despite only having 10 players on the pitch, Wayne Country Day dominated in the second half.
Valentine assisted sophomore Thomas Gurley with a score in the 46th minute.
Nine minutes later, Max Young scored off a cross from Dylan Brown to give the Chargers the lead for good.
Andrew Sherman scored in the 66th minute to put the Chargers up 4-2.
“We switched things up at halftime, and the boys adapted really quickly to it,” Ellis said. “We just overran them in the second half.”
The Heat scored in the 72nd minute to make it a 4-3 game, but the Chargers played great defense for the last eight minutes of the game to hold off the Heat and earn their second win of the season.
The Chargers improve to 2-0 on the season and travel to Wilson on Thursday for a game against Wilson Christian Academy (3-1).
