Winning against a team once is hard enough, but beating them twice is extremely difficult. The Bowling Green Purples beat the Greenwood Gators 3-1 on September 20th, their second win against GHS on the season. The 12-0 Purples beat Greenwood 1-0 in the first match of the season, and found a way to score three goals against the Gators’ in the second game. “There were spurts of really good play,” said Purples’ coach Craig Widener. “We knocked the ball around and moved it really nicely.”
Similar to the first match of the season, Bowling Green relied on an underclassmen to get the first goal of the game. Freshman Arif Smajlovic scored for the Purples in the first half to give his team an early advantage. “It’s amazing, I can’t really explain it,” said Smajlovic. Leading 1-0 at halftime, the Purples wasted no time to score in the second half. Senior Felix Villatoro punched in a goal in the first 30 seconds of the half to give BGHS a 2-0 lead. Not ten minutes later did Exodus Bargblor score another goal, extending the lead to 3-0 for the Purples. Despite scoring a late goal, Greenwood couldn’t advance past the BGHS defense consistently. The strong defense held the Gators to one goal, and gave the Purples a 3-1 victory at Greenwood.
The BGHS win put the Purples in a commanding first place in the district. The undefeated Purples are now 6-0 in district play, ahead of the 4-0 South Warren Spartans. BGHS has two more district games left in the regular season, both against South Warren. “That’s all were really concerned about is winning those two other district games,” said Widener. “The higher seed (in the district tournament) the better.”
This win is big for the Purples, as they now have the tiebreaker over Greenwood in the district standings. This game sets the tone for the remainder of the season for the Purples, “We know were a good team, first in district,” said Smajlovic. “We’re going to keep winning.” BGHS takes on Elizabethtown and Trinity this coming week, and South Warren, and then plays South Warren twice in four days to finish district play.
