Cassopolis goes 1-2 at the Chieftain Invitational

Published 10:28 am Thursday, August 30, 2018

CASSOPOLIS — The Cassopolis and Bloomingdale soccer teams were unable to decide on a winner in their Southwest 10 Conference match Aug. 22.

The Rangers and Cardinals tied at 2-2. The match was also tied at halftime, 1-1.

Lane Francis scored in the seventh minute for the Rangers, while Todd Bussey tied the match at 2-2 with a goal in the 78th minute off a free kick above the 18-yard line.

Bloomingdale got goals from Kalob Harris and Gustavo Silva in the 27th and 76th minutes respectively.

“Both teams played very tough soccer,” said Cassopolis coach Austin Francis. “I thought we maintained better possession of the ball and had better opportunities to finish, but did not capitalize. We have a much younger team as we graduated seven last year and Bloomingdale graduated two. “ I am proud of our guys for fighting back to tie the game back up after conceding the corner kick goal on a mental lapse where we left Gustavo practically unmarked. It was a great finish on his part though. I see us improving a ton as the season progresses.”

The Rangers were back on the pitch Wednesday as they hosted Eau Claire in a Southwest 10 Conference match.

Chieftain Invitational

The Dowagiac soccer team went 2-1 at its own Chieftain Invitational on Saturday.

The Chieftains defeated Bangor 2-1 in a shootout before knocking off Cassopolis 4-1 in the second match of the round robin.

In the final round, Dowagiac was defeated by Fennville 2-0, in a match that was stopped with just under 14 minutes remaining by the officials, due to the escalating physicality of the match.

In the final round, Fennville scored a goal in each half to earn the championship, based on the head-to-head tiebreaker.

Fennville and Bangor both ended the day with 2-1 records.

The Rangers were 1-2, defeating Fennville 1-0 in the first round on a goal by Buster Ward.

For the Chieftains in the opening round, Ben McCrorey scored the lone goal during regulation off the assist by Matt Mosier.

Against Cassopolis, Dowagiac led 3-0 at halftime on goals by Cristian Wilson, Johnny Ruiz and Isaac Saavedra. McCrorey assisted on the Ruiz goal.

In the second half, Wilson scored his second goal of the match.

The Chieftains outshot all three of its opponents by a combined total of 40-7.