The Catawba Ridge Copperheads held off a second half rally from the Sun Valley Spartans to get a win over the North Carolina school Thursday night.
The Copperheads won 13-7 to even their record to 5-5 on the season.
“We are winning the games we should win,” said Catawba Ridge head boys coach Mike Gambrill. “We are building. We are getting there.”
The Copperheads opened the game scoring two minutes into play with a goal from Callan Hiser.
Sun Valley evened the game two minutes later, but Cooper Pascal again put the Copperheads ahead with seven minutes left in the first quarter.
Pascal would score five minutes later and Caleb Williams added the Copperheads’ fourth goal of the quarter to put them up 4-1 to end the opening period.
Catawba Ridge opened the second quarter with a goal from Mike Naughten just 52 seconds into play.
The Copperheads kept the pressure on Sun Valley as they maintained possession for most of the second quarter. Hiser added his second goal of the game with 9:39 left in the half. Naughten added his second goal less than two minutes later for the Copperheads to give them a comfortable five goal lead.
Boston Halpin found the back of the net with about three minutes left in the half and then Williams scored his second goal 13 seconds later.
Sun Valley added another goal before the half, but Catawba Ridge led 9-3 at the break.
As much as the Copperheads controlled the first half, they started slow in the second half as Sun Valley became more aggressive and scored three goals to cut the Catawba Ridge lead to just three. Hiser secured a hat trick and scored for the Copperheads on a breakaway with just 11 seconds left in the third quarter.
The fourth quarter was testy between the two teams.
Sun Valley got the deficit back to three scoring about 6:30 left in the game. After a timeout, Williams got a hat trick for Catawba Ridge to again reopen their lead.
Drew Fikis gave the Copperheads some much needed breathing room scoring with 2:28 left in the game.
Pascal added another goal with less than two minutes left to get the hat trick and close out the game for Catawba Ridge.
Mac Banks: mac@fortmillprepsports.com, @fortprep
