Raptors on a roll
Silver Creek soccer team tops Greeley West for third straight win
LONGMONT — The goalie carousel continued for young Silver Creek Friday night with Dalmiro Naveira and Nick Bigelow splitting time in net.
EJ Davis made sure to back them up with a big night.
The junior scored twice to give him a team-leading five goals on the season and the Raptors beat Greeley West 4-2 for their third straight win.
The effort came with starting keeper Alex Sands and sophomore Alex Larner out due to quarantine protocol. And in place, Naveira manned a clean first half before heading back to his for ward position, and freshman keeper Bigelow took it the rest of the way in his first varsity action.
“We’re pretty confident that we can get what we need done,” Davis said. “We know we have our keepers out, we have banged-up players, we have a whole new team. We know we’re down in that aspect and have to step it up in other areas of the field. It should be good.”
And it was.
Finishing the first half of a six-game stretch in 12 days to end the regular season, Davis set the tone with a goal in the opening minutes for Silver Creek, while Andrew Van Ens later added his fourth goal of the season before Kael
Pacaro swished the second goal of his career.
What it means in the bigger picture for the Raptors remains to be seen.
In the race for the 5A/4A Northern Colorado Athletic Conference title, the Raptors (5-2) came into the day a game back in the loss column to Holy Family and Erie, and two back of undefeated Windsor. With one week left, they’ll finish the season with three road games in five days, star ting with Loveland Monday, then Greeley Central Wednesday, and Holy Family Friday.
No matter where Silver Creek finishes, however, it’ll have a tough time climbing into the postseason in its first year in Class 5A. With only two 5A teams in the NCAC, the league doesn’t have any automatic qualifying spots for them. Instead, the Raptors will vie for one of just four at-large bids.
“We’re just going to go out there, play our game, we trust our game, and we know we can win the game,” Naveira said. “We don’t worry about all the other factors that can af fect it. We just tr y to do our thing and it seems to be working.”
Silver Creek took a a quick lead as Davis took a feed from Van Ens and beat the keeper one-on-one. Van Ens then scored himself on a free kick in the 43rd and Pacaro added to it in the 65th, securing a picturesque pass in the box from Ben Hyman before blistering a no-doubter to make it 3-0.
Greeley West (3-5) scored twice in a five-minute span to trim the lead to 3-2 before Davis iced the game with his winner in the 74th.
Showing its age, Silver Creek has now scored 18 goals on the season — none of them have come by a senior.
“I got a lot of youth playing out of their mind,” Silver Creek coach Rob Johnson said. “I love it. Can’t complain. Just wish the season wasn’t ending so soon.”