COURTLAND-The Jekyll and Hyde soccer season continued this week for Southampton Academy. After tying a team they should have beat on Tuesday (Brunswick Academy), the Raiders jumped out to a 5-0 lead on Blessed Sacrament Huguenot and held on for a 5-2 win in a Virginia Commonwealth Conference match.

The Raiders also beat Isle of Wight Academy on Friday. The Raiders rallied from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Chargers 4-3 in a nail-biter to clinch third place in the VCC and a home tourney match on Monday at 4.30 against Brunswick Academy.

Drey Chrysatomous, an eighth-grader, broke the school record for goals in a season with 17. The record was previously held by Cody Fretts.

&uot;We play up and we play down,&uot; said Southampton Academy head coach Jamie Weist after Thursday’s win. &uot;The tournament starts Monday. I want to go into the tournament on a roll, and this game is a good start. The way this conference is, any team can win it all. If we play like we did today and like we played against Windsor, we can go all the way.&uot;

Blessed Sacrament (3-5-2) beat Southampton Academy (8-5-2) 3-1 at home earlier in the season. You would have never known it after the first half of Thursday’s game. The Raiders executed perfectly all half and scored five goals. The BSH players sulked, and questioned the referees and each other the entire first half.

SA opened the scoring when Drey Chrysostomou knocked a through-ball to Michael Milteer who hit the net.

Later, Drey Chrysostomou took a shot that went through BSH goalie Nathin Temple’s hands.

Milteer gave the Raiders a 3-0 lead with a bullet past Temple.

SA’s fourth goal came when Brett Moore scored on a set-up by Drey Chrysostomou.

The last goal of the half was probably the most upsetting for BSH. Milteer was tripped in the box, causing a penalty kick. Will Hastings took the free kick, which was initially blocked by Temple, but Hastings was able to snare the rebound and tap home the fifth goal of the half. The Knights hung their heads back to the bench when the first 40 minutes expired.

To its credit BSH did not give up. Robert Pickus and Richard Young both scored goals at the beginning of the second half to cut the SA lead to 5-2. However, the Raiders’ defense clamped down hard on BSH in the last 20 minutes of the game. The Knights had a hard time even passing the ball when the Raiders defense swarmed the ball handler with a double team. Sweeper Sarah McFarland did a particularly good job of strangling the Knights offense, helping with the double team and picking up a sackful of loose balls.

&uot;We played a box and one. We had Sarah mark up against number 7 (Russ LeBoff, BSH’s leading offensive player) the entire second half,&uot; Weist said. &uot;We wanted to double him in the middle. That’s what you have to do against an awesome player like that.&uot;

SA’s final goal came late in the game when Moore stole the ball from Ben Lewis and drilled one to the right set of the net.

Interestingly, the officials would not let Southampton Academy’s Craig New play in the contest. New had broken his arm two weeks ago and played three games previous to Thursday with a soft cast. The officials requested a doctor’s clearance.

Weist said his team needs to play better right from the start.

&uot;We were shocked, because the first time we played them, they scored the first two goals,&uot; Weist noted. &uot;This is the same message that we had against Windsor. We’ve go to start strong and have intensity from the very beginning. If we can take an early lead, we can deflate them and we can pick up our own confidence.&uot;