By Ted Waddell
ELDRED — September 26, 2000 — In Thursday afternoon’s boys varsity soccer outing against the Family School Falcons, the home team Yellow Jackets of Eldred (0–4 OCIAA, 0–4–1 overall) were defeated 8-2 in an Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association (OCIAA) Division IV game. The Falcons remain unbeaten in the OCIAA with a 3–0 record (6–0 overall).
Last year, the Yellow Jackets handed the Falcons their only two losses during regular season competition.
“I think they just killed us,” said a disheartened Eldred coach Roger Weyant. “They were a superior team, they were loaded. They were just too good for us, but we’ll get over it.”
According to Weyant, he was pleasantly surprised that his squad was able to keep up with the Falcons during the first half.
“I think we’re competitive with any other team in the league, but they’re the dominant team right now and I don’t think anybody’s going to beat them,” he added.”They’ve got a championship team, and every one of them has got unbelievable skills out there.”
It’s a rebuilding year for the Eldred booters this season, as they lost seven seniors to graduation. They have three returning 12th graders: Tom Butler, Jamie Haas and John Schneider.
“All the rest are juniors and sophomores,” said Weyant.
“It’s going to be a little rough starting out,” he added. “We expect to do okay, and hopefully we can finish up .500 or better with the new system where we play a lot of Class C schools.”
Weyant gave this capsule look at his team:
“John Schneider is one of our best scorers, our defenseman is Alois Renggli and Tim Schneider, a tough little kid, is doing well right now.” said Weyant.
He noted that “we’ve got some powerful shooters” in the likes of Dan Desseauve, John Schneider and Mike Swope.
“They can all hit the ball,” he said.
Bill Musgrove, coach of the Falcons and Family School athletic director, described the game as “very tough, very physical.”
“Both teams played real hard,” he added. “It got a little too hard on both sides after a while, [and] we just wanted to finish out the game and we did.”
“I was very nervous because Eldred plays a very good, aggressive defense and they beat us twice last year,” he added of his pre-game jitters. “Once we got our offense going, we basically took control but they played extremely hard right to the end.”
Last year, the Falcons were 10-4-2. This season, they almost didn’t get to play soccer as the league in which they were a member — the Western Sullivan League — folded and local teams joined the OCIAA.
“After the Western Sullivan League broke up, we applied for Section IV (Delaware and Broome Counties) membership but were denied,” said Musgrove.
According to Musgrove, at first the powers that be in Section IX didn’t want the Falcons either, but relented at the last minute.
“Section IX was basically forced to take us because we were already a member last year, and that’s the rules,” he added. “We just wanted to make sure we played somewhere, [and] it’s great that we wound up staying (in Section IX).”
The Falcons have three returning members from last year’s squad: a couple of juniors (Scott Tennyson and Evan Yakata) and sophomore Dana Boza.
“We’ve got a talented squad that works extremely well together and it seems like we’re improving as time goes on,” said Musgrove. “I think we should continue to be real aggressive, and hopefully continue winning games if we remain free of injuries. It’s a team effort [because] we’re all about unity, it’s one and equal.”
On Thursday, the Falcons jumped out to a 2-0 first half lead after Even Yakata scored unassisted at 28:34, followed by a solo effort at 14:49 by Wells Thompson.
Thompson led off the second half scoring attack for the Falcons with a goal at 36:58 on an assist from Tom Burke.
Seconds later, John Schneider put Eldred into the scorebook with a penalty kick at 36:41.
At 34:14, Thompson was back on track in the aggressive game, as he scored unassisted for the Family School. He put another one into the net at 29:59 on an assist from Brian Epstein to give the Falcons a 5-1 lead.
Eldred’s Schneider stepped up to the penalty kick line again at 20:48 to make it a 5-2 game.