Sports

Wolverines Rise Above Wheaton

Watkins Mill is getting on track with back-to-back wins.

As the Churchill Bulldogs walked off Watkins Mill's field 10 days ago—having wrested away a last-minute win—Coach Arnold Tarzy paused to make a prediction.

"You’re going to win your first state championship this year," he told Watkins Mill Coach Jeff Heckert. "Those guys are really good."

The lofty praise came in stark contrast to the Wolverines’ mood after the 1-0 defeat. They had hit their first rough patch of the season, a pair of home games that they let slip through their grasp. Four days prior, they led Einstein 3-1 but went on to lose 5-4 in overtime. Against undefeated Churchill—ranked at the top of Washington Post and Gazette rankings—they did everything they needed to do . . . except punch in a goal.

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Consecutive wins are putting them back on the championship path Tarzy predicted: a 4-1 win over Rockville on Oct. 4, followed by a down-to-the-wire win over Wheaton on Monday night, improves their record to 5-2.

The outcome seemed bleak for much of the match with Wheaton, for a long stretch looking like another game that might get away. Watkins Mill missed a penalty kick in the first half, and by the second half, Heckert was chastising them for uncharacteristically listless play.

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The team started to respond with about 15 minutes left, upping their intensity and mounting more dangerous pushes forward. That aggressive play that translated into a series of corner kicks. Amid the scrum after one of those corners, Obed Agyei got off a shot that beat the goalie but skidded off the crossbar. Two minutes later, centerback Kedin Rodriguez nearly scored off a corner. He took the ensuing corner, and when it caromed back out, he chased down the rebound just ahead of a Wheaton slide tackle inside the box.

The referee awarded a penalty shot over the outraged protest of Wheaton’s coach, and all-state midfielder Patrick Pato buried the shot in the back of the net, finally giving Watkins Mill the lead with less than eight minutes to play.

The Wolverines eliminated all doubt a minute later when Rodriguez delivered a long-ball to striker William Yougnia, who barrelled past a pair of Knights and calmly tucked his shot inside the far post. It was the senior’s team-leading seventh goal of the season. "He just exploded to that ball," Heckert said. "He has a knack of not doing too much, and then all of a sudden he’s there."

Monday night’s win was Watkins Mill's fourth shutout in seven games. The inexperienced defense has had its shaky spells—the five goals given up to Einstein and late-game lapses against Magruder and Churchill—but they are steadily finding their resolve.

Where junior Sergio Mosquera is the vocal, demonstrative leader on the back line, Rodriguez is quiet and fierce, making relentless runs all over the field. So while it was Pato and Yougnia on the score sheet, the common thread of both goals was Rodriguez, whose emergence has filled in one of the team’s gaps coming into the season.

"He’s got no fear," Heckert said. "Our biggest question mark was the back line, and here’s a freshman stepping in, his first year playing high school ball."

Regardless of the Wheaton game's aesthetic appeal, it was a much-needed win.

"Could we do better? Yes. Was it sloppy? Yeah. But it’s a division win, we broke the schneid at home, I’m a happy guy," Heckert said. "We’ve had some games not go our way when I felt like we were the better team, so we had to win that game."

The Wolverines’ march toward their first-ever state title takes them tonight to Northwood, who will be looking to avenge their loss to Watkins Mill last year in the regional semifinals.


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