MOSCOW \u2014 The Moscow Bears and Lewiston Bengals split regular season boys soccer meetings one apiece, and their district tournament encounter on Saturday at the Moscow Community Playfields was about as closely contested as one might have expected in light of that fact.<\/p>\n
There was little to report through a scoreless first half on the windy and overcast morning; following intermission, however, both teams revealed their sense of urgency. The second-seeded Bears took the initiative and drew first blood, only for the third-seeded Bengals to strike back in the latter stages and seize a 2-1 victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team really rallied,\u201d Lewiston coach Dalton Mauzay said. \u201cIt was good to see that \u2014 to have them keep believing and keep fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lewiston will now visit top-seeded Sandpoint to play for the district title at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, while Moscow\u2019s season has come to a close.<\/p>\n
Bears break through<\/p>\n
It was quickly apparent after halftime that Moscow (7-6-1) had come out on a mission. The Bears dominated possession and flirted with a goal for several minutes before senior leader Jonas Mordhorst drove in a header off a corner kick from sophomore Cody Brooks to move the scoreboard at last.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe corner kicks are a mental game more than anything, and as long as you get a decent delivery, it\u2019s just up to the player to go out and get it,\u201d said Moscow coach Caleb Brooks, who is also Cody\u2019s older brother. \u201cJonas just showed what he has all season: that he\u2019s more aggressive and bigger, and will do the hard thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mordhorst had also supplied Moscow\u2019s first score off an assist from Cody Brooks en route to the Bears\u2019 3-1 victory against Lewiston (6-7) on Sept. 16 \u2014 but in that encounter, they built up a three-goal buffer before Ryan Katzenberg finally got the Bengals on the board late.<\/p>\n
This match ended up more closely paralleling the teams\u2019 rematch on Sept. 23, in which Lewiston also prevailed 2-1 in spite of being outshot 4-3. This time out, the Bears took five shots on goal to the Bengals\u2019 four, but again did not quite make the most of their chances.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we have the ball that much in their half, we have to put things away early,\u201d Caleb Brooks said. \u201cAll the credit to Lewiston. They turned it around, had a lot of energy, and their striker Ryan (Katzenberg) is a very good player.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bengals bite back<\/p>\n
Another 20-plus minutes of scoreless play elapsed, and the possibility of a 1-0 Moscow victory looked strong before Katzenberg found his opening, sprinting into position for a feed from Kyle Wicks that snuck past Moscow defenders and gave him a goal opportunity at near point-blank range that he would not waste. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we scored that first goal to tie it up, you could feel the energy shift,\u201d Mauzay said. \u201cWhen they scored, our boys did well in response, but there was kind of a slow energy shift in the seniors.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was only a few more minutes before the revitalized Bengals once again penetrated the Moscow defense, getting multiple players in position to gun for a goal deep in the proverbial red zone. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MOSCOW \u2014 The Moscow Bears and Lewiston Bengals split regular season boys soccer meetings one apiece, and their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2053],"tags":[58404,228,227,256,2296,7,63979,6,63978],"class_list":{"0":"post-440141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-bengals","8":"tag-area-roundup","9":"tag-bengals","10":"tag-cincinnati","11":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","12":"tag-cincinnatibengals","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-idaho-vandal-football","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-washington-state-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115360500005544049","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}