Costa’s goal lifts Cumberland past Shea
Raiders drop fourth game by one goal
CUMBERLAND — As the Shea boys soccer team continued to waste good scoring opportunities in the first 30 minutes of Tuesday night’s Division I Blackstone Valley clash with Cumberland, the Raider reserves tried to reassure coach Pierre Ridore that a breakthrough was coming.
Ridore, however, had seen this story before.
“By the time the first half ended, I’m like ‘This is not good,’” Ridore said. “Before they scored, this game could’ve been different and we could’ve been up three or four goals. We keep missing our chances and that is our problem. We can’t finish. We have good skills and we play well against every team, but we just can’t score. This is our fourth regular season game and it’s the fourth time we lost by one goal.”
After weathering Shea’s pressure for the first 30 minutes, the Clippers scored on one of their few opportunities in the first half to walk out of foggy Tucker Field with a crucial Division I victory. Forward Ricardo Benitez found space between Shea’s midfield and defense to play a ball through the Raider backline for Cooper Costa, who clipped the ball over goalie Ednilson Tavares in 33rd minute of a 1-0 Clipper victory.
“This division is very competitive, but our guys are really battling and we have great senior leadership,” Cumberland coach Justin Resendes said. “We have good depth, so we just hope we can keep grinding this games out one at a time. We have a lot of competitive teams in this division. We need to stay healthy.
“This is my third year with the program, so it’s great to see where these guys came from as sophomores now as seniors. They know what it takes and we’re relying on that senior class to take us far.”
Shea (0-4 Division I) is clearly the best team in the state without a point, but that is of little solace to Ridore, whose team already battled La Salle to a 4-3 defeat to go along with three 1-0 defeats. The Raiders have talented players like freshman Luis Mendes, sophomore William Dabo and senior Anibal Santos, but they need to start picking up vic- tories if they want to reach the playoffs.
The Raiders started a three-game road trip Tuesday with visits to Hendricken tomorrow night and East Providence next week still to come.
“It’s crazy because we’re too good to be losing to teams that I don’t think are up to our level of skill,” Ridore said. “We just can’t finish and the name of the game is at the end of the day you have to score goals.”
Inside the first 15 seconds of the contest the Raiders nearly found a way past Clipper goalie Jake Reed when Cristian Rodriguez was put through on net, but his shot was saved by Reed.
Cumberland came into the match concerned with Shea’s central midfielders, and those concerns were well founded because the Clippers had a hard time dealing with the Raiders’ movement in the middle of the field. Chances continued to come for Shea, as sophomore Frank Barrios had chances to score in the 16th and 19th minutes, but both efforts were wasted.
“The thing is, in the past the great strikers I had who scored 20 or 30 goals didn’t always have much talent,” Ridore said. “They were just fast and able to finish. They were able to score and they wanted their name in the newspaper. This team, we have guys who want to dribble and not shoot. We’re not taking advantage of the angles we’re creating.”
Cumberland (3-1 Division I) slowly worked its way into the game by taking care of the ball. Eventually, the Clippers took advantage of the space in the center of the field when Benitez found space between Shea’s back two lines and played a ball through for Costa to score his first goal of the season.
“Cooper was asked to play a different role today and he was the one who had the run behind the defense,” Resendes said. “We’re glad to see what we’re doing transition from training to the game. We have a great chance to go far this season, but we have to work hard. The key for us is to make sure we’re putting away those chances that we didn’t quite put away tonight.”
Cumberland, which travels to Curtis Corner Middle School tomorrow night to play South Kingstown, dominated the second half, but the Clippers failed to score another goal. The Clippers had five corner kicks, but Tavares was brilliant, making six of his nine saves in the final 40 minutes.