Hawks battle Raiders to 4-4 tie

Jacob Marrocco
Posted 9/24/15

The Bishop Hendricken soccer team withstood two separate comeback bids from Shea to secure a 4-4 tie and at least a point out of the Division I contest.

The Hawks (2-1-1) had leads of 1-0 and 3-1 …

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Hawks battle Raiders to 4-4 tie

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The Bishop Hendricken soccer team withstood two separate comeback bids from Shea to secure a 4-4 tie and at least a point out of the Division I contest.

The Hawks (2-1-1) had leads of 1-0 and 3-1 before Shea scored three unanswered goals to take a 4-3 lead late in the second half.

Shea’s Jeffrey Baah rocketed a shot top-shelf past Hendricken goalkeeper Thomas Faltus with 13 minutes left in the game. The undefeated Raiders (3-0-2) looked to have the game in control, but Chukwuma Onyejose responded to the pressure.

“We’re still learning a lot about each other on the team,” Hendricken head coach Michael Rooney said. “I thought we thoroughly deserved to be 3-1, and then we kind of let it slip away a little bit, but they clawed their way back in.”

With nearly two minutes left in the game, Onyejose found himself alone in the box and put the equalizer past freshman keeper Ednilson Tavares. The score was knotted at 4, and neither team had much of an opportunity to regain the lead before stoppage time expired.

[Shea] had a couple of decent shots that ended up in goals, and before we knew it we were down one,” Rooney said. “So to come back and tie it at that stage, we could have very easily packed it in. So that’s a good thing, we’re now learning ‘Hey, look, we don’t have to panic. If we’re down, we just keep on plodding away, and eventually it’ll come our way.”

Chukwuma Onyejose scored the only goal of a very defensive first half. Onyejose took a header from midfielder Alex Appolonia and buried it in the back of the net for the Hawks’ first goal.

Hendricken had a few chances to add on to its lead. Appolonia had a shot attempt in the middle go wide right out of bounds. In the final two minutes, Appolonia sent a pass to Chukwudi Onyejose in the box, but his header went past the right post of the net out of play.

Hendricken managed just four shots in the first half, while the Raiders had only one.

The second half was a more offensive showing. Shea leveled the score at 1 less than a minute into the action when Ruben Almeida placed a shot in the bottom left corner of the net, freezing Faltus.

The Hawks responded by scoring two goals in less than 10 minutes, beginning with Nicholas Williams putting Craig Conway’s header past Tavares. Chukwudi Onyejose got on the scoring sheet next when he fired a cross-body shot into the goal.

“Both teams were kind of feeling each other out in the first half,” Rooney said. “That’s what it came down to. Second half, they made it 1-1. We came right back and scored and I think that kind of shook them a little bit. Then before they knew it they were 3-1 down, then at that point you might as well lose 10-1, so they threw everything forward.”

Shea, which had scored at least three goals in three of four league games to that point, benefited greatly from throwing caution to the wind. The Raiders took to scoring two goals in 10 minutes to answer the Hawks right back. Kyle Martins’ free kick bounced off the front of Faltus and rolled out to Lloyd Turey, who put the easy shot in the back of the net to cut the deficit to 1 with 27 minutes left.

Marco Tavares notched the game-tying goal nine minutes later when his try slipped into the net, setting the stage for the final-minutes stalemate.

“We got to work on taking the air out of the ball and finishing out the game,” Rooney said.

The Hawks will take to the road for a game at Macomber Stadium against Central Falls. The Warriors (2-2-0) have won three of their last four, including a 3-1 victory Monday against East Providence.

“Scoring when we have opportunities,” Rooney said about what the team would work on before the Central Falls game. “If we had taken our opportunities early on, we wouldn’t have been in that situation. But it was a good result, [Shea is] undefeated, they’re still undefeated.”

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