McCallie wins 7-0 on senior night

The McCallie School soccer team had some trouble connecting passes early on, but after a goal in the 13th minute the Blue Tornado seemed to have an unending connection with the back of the net.

They trounced visiting Boyd-Buchanan 7-0 with an offensive barrage on senior night.

“We made a commitment to move the ball quickly, possess the ball and never panic,” Blue Tornado coach Chris Cushenbery said. “We had a lot of turnovers early, but we didn’t panic and never abandoned how we wanted to play.

“Passing and possessing was something we had a lot of success with early in the season, but we kind of drifted away from it. We wanted to get back to that and to our guys playing to their strengths.”

With the midpoint of the first half approaching and neither team settled into a rhythm, McCallie senior Drew Viscomi found a seam and fired away. The shot was saved, but Thomas Priest controlled the rebound and slid a pass over to Ben Brock, who gave McCallie a 1-0 lead.

Less than three minutes later, Andre Roberts fed Viscomi to double the lead, and a minute after that, Aidan Foley added another goal assisted by Harrison Swank.

“We had the ball most of the game, and when you have the ball you can make stuff happen,” Cushenbery said. “We had good movement and started opening up some seams.”

Viscomi made the halftime lead 4-0 with a textbook free kick that bent over the wall and continued to drift away from the keeper as it curled into the upper left corner.

McCallie put eight shots on frame in the first half and ended its strong offensive showing with a whopping 24 shots.

The second half held much of the same results with the Blue Tornado tacking on three more goals.

Priest’s second assist helped Viscomi complete a hat trick, and arock added his second goal of the game to make it 6-0. Viscomi put an exclamation point on senior night with his fourth goal on another free kick, this time opting to go low and outside the wall.

“This is a special class,” Cushenbery said of his seniors. “They’ve been great leaders of our culture and are hard-working, fantastic soccer players. They’re leaving the program better than they found it. They’ve set the bar in a tangible way, and hopefully their best is yet to come. They’ve got three weeks to write the ending they want, and they’re hungry for it.”

Contact Idris Garcia at sports@timesfreepress.com.