BURTON—Berkshire’s Sam Roach scored a goal just 16 seconds into Tuesday’s Chagrin Valley Conference Valley Division showdown with rival Cardinal, but the Huskies dominated the next 79 minutes, 46 seconds to pull out a 6-2 win.
Junior Jacob Revak scored four goals and junior Brendan White and senior Trent Mast each pitched in with one in the win for the Huskies.
“We did the same thing in the scrimmage, the first 30 seconds we gave up a goal,” said Cardinal assistant coach Brian Gallagher. “For some reason we need that kick in the butt to wake up almost every game. These guys realize what needs to be done. For a co-ed team they're very physical and very fast. They don't need much to energize them. Once they see the coaches get excited they realize it's go time.”
The Huskies (1-0) needed some time to recover from Berkshire’s quick goal.
Revak tied the game with 24:38 remaining in the first half and the Huskies were relentless the rest of the way.
Junior Nathan Dhayer, Revak and Mast all had near misses in the first 40 minutes and opened the second half the same way.
White headed in his goal with 28:19 left to play and Revak scored three goals in the next six minutes to give the Huskies a 5-1 lead with just 18:12 left in the game.
Mast made it 6-1 a minute later.
“It was a good win against our rivals,” Revak said. “It couldn’t go much better.”
Berkshire added a penalty kick goal to cut Cardinal’s lead to four goals with just over four minutes left.
“To have a second half like they did against Berkshire, where it was 1-1 and we scored four straight goals on them, amazing,” Gallagher said. “It was just amazing to watch.”
As good as the offense was, Cardinal’s defense also did its part.
“One thing we've preached for our kids is this isn't about the attacking this year, it's about our defense,” Gallagher said. “Hold the line. We don’t' want to lose a game 6-5. We would rather win a game 2-1. The unselfishness of this team, this game was as much about the defense locking it down. The defense, this game right here, not so much the offense, it came from our defense.”
Sophomore Austin Miller was impressive in his first career start in the net.
“Austin is a great kid,” Gallagher said. “He put a lot of work in this off-season in becoming the goal keeper. Coach (Kristin) Dhayer has worked very hard with him to get him to where he is now. Don’t' get me wrong, he still has a lot of work to do, but he's come a long way. He's never played goalie before, but he has done a great job.”
