Lord Botetourt took an early lead and kept the pressure on homestanding James River as the Cavaliers took a 6-0 boys soccer win in Springwood last week. With the win LB swept the intra-county series.
Gardner Branscom scored two goals while Abe Barkett, Trey Rice, Micah Rich, and Arin Sparks each had one for the Cavaliers.
“We came out of the gates ready to play, scoring two goals in the first five minutes of play,” said LB coach Tim Wright. “I think this is something to embrace as we enter this week and look to finish the regular season how we started.
“We played hard against LB,” said River coach Jared Whiting. “They’re loaded with talent and just a very sound team. We matched them on effort but their first touches were better than ours, opening up more options for them.”
The Cavaliers traveled to district leader Northside on Friday and dropped an 8-3 game. Branscom, Rice and Matt Smith scored for LB.
“History hurt us,” said Wright. “We knocked them out of the state tournament last year. Northside had many reasons to treat this as a state championship game, and they did.”
LB bounced back on Monday to beat Franklin County in overtime, 4-2, to improve to 12-2 overall. The Cavs were at Byrd Tuesday as they attempt to earn the second spot in next week’s BRD tournament. The Cavs are at Fleming Thursday, and both Byrd and Fleming were one game behind LB in the standings coming into the week.
“With big games this week we are seeking the number two seed going into tournament play,” said Wright.
James River lost at home to Giles last Thursday, 9-1.
“Giles has a lot of big, strong, talented players that were able to muscle us off the ball all night,” said Whiting. “We had heavy legs from the night before and by the second half we had nothing left to contest the size of these guys. I’ll give our guys credit, they never quit.”
The loss dropped River to 4-5 overall with another busy week. The Knights were at Alleghany Tuesday, have a home game with Radford Thursday and a return trip to Giles on Friday.
