Cape soccer falls to Indian River in conference championship
The Cape Henlopen soccer team got off to a slow start and couldn’t catch up Nov. 5, as the Indian River squad took home the Henlopen Conference Championship trophy with a 4-1 victory at Milford’s Briggs Stadium.
The Indians drew first blood when Jordan Illian took a pass from Caleb Galbreath and popped a kick over Cape goalie Dru Schneider for the first tally at the 17-minute mark. Connor Bird followed with a goal at 26 minutes from Evan Peterson. The first half finished at 2-0 for the Southern Division champs.
The Indians didn’t let up, as Shane Carroll hit the twine at the 47-minute mark for their third goal.
Angel Arano Rebolledo put Cape on the scoreboard at 57:00 from Donovan Sandoval to close the score to within two.
The back-and-forth action continued until the last minute of the contest, when IR’s Cole Veirs drove a pass downfield that was picked up by Illian, who booted it over Schneider for his second goal and the fourth tally of the game, putting a stamp on the Henlopen Conference Championship.
The Vikings are 13-3 with two of those losses coming to IR. Indian River is 11-1-2.
“It was very disappointing, as we thought we really had a chance to win the conference championship today,” said Cape coach Patrick Kilby. “We came out flat and we played flat with no energy and passion for the first 60 minutes of the game. We lost every 50-50 battle, we didn’t win any second balls in the midfield and we did not combine through the central midfield as we looked to move the ball down the field. I truly hope this is not something that we will see in the first round of the state tournament. Our guys are somewhat inexperienced in big-time games, so I’m hoping that what we experienced against Indian River in the conference championship game will teach us a hard lesson and prepare us for the Appo game on Friday.”
Cape will host Appoquinimink in the first round of the Division I state tournament at 7 p.m., Friday, Nov. 11.
