Jonah Sipes
In some games, luck can play a factor. That’s exactly what happened with Columbus North Thursday night.
Class 3A No. 13 Bull Dogs got the game-winning goal with seven minutes left in the match to pick up a 2-1 boys soccer win over Conference Indiana foe Bloomington North.
The winning goal for Columbus North came when Edgar Ibarra Diaz took a couple touches from a few yards outside the goal box. It looked like Ibarra Diaz was going for the cross pass, but the ball took an odd bounce and Cougars goalkeeper Dominic Rosolowski couldn’t cradle it in on the bounce. The ball then took another as it went into the goal for the game-winner.
“I was looking for the cross to try to get someone’s head or foot in. It was genuinely a bad pass. It just went in because the keeper wasn’t ready for it,” Ibarra Diaz said.
The Bull Dogs’ (1-1, 1-0) first score of the night came in the 10th minute when Jonah Sipes got an unassisted goal after he dribbled across the field and delivered a hard kick from the right side of the box for the early 1-0 lead.
Bloomington North got the equalizer in the 26th minute when the Cougars put pressure on the Columbus North defense, and after a deflection off a defender, the ball landed right at Marin Garcia, who finished it to level the game at 1-1.
The Bull Dogs put up nine shots on goal to five for Bloomington North. Nicolas De Linnan Palacios had four saves for Columbus North.
“From last year, we had to replace a lot of really significant pieces, and we have a lot of kids emerging into certain roles,” Columbus North coach Andy Glover said. “We’re going to find the need for some substitute rotations and patterns, so there’s going to be a lot of newer faces getting some experience. Bloomington North has done nothing but get better over the past three years. I’m really glad they’re on the schedule and in the conference, and we open up the conference with a win.”
