Boys soccer took the win against Emporia on Thursday 2-0, despite making a slow start. The Varsity match was switched with JV to play at 4:30 p.m. instead of 6:30 p.m. due to weather concerns, but neither game was cut short due to rain.

“We beat them in the summer and we came out thinking we were going to have an easy game, but it wasn’t,” sophomore Mason McElwaine said. “But we picked it up in the second half and we came out with a win.”

Manhattan left the first half scoreless, and conceded most of the possession to Emporia until 20 minutes in. They picked up the pace towards the end of the second half after head coach Mike Sanchez made some substitutions, earning a corner and keeping more of the play in Emporia’s half.

“They were sitting back a bit allowing us to pass and weren’t letting us get forward and I think we just had to make some changes,” Sanchez said. “We had to force them to play a bit more direct[ly], force them to recognize the speed we have up top and drop back a little bit and give us some more space.”

Senior Grant Snowden scored both goals against the Spartans. The first goal didn’t come until 25 minutes left in the game, with a header Snowden served from the corner by McElwaine.

“It was a great ball served by [McElwaine],” Snowden said. “He really just served it on the back of the six-yard box and I kind of just found some open space… got a good bounce to the back post and it ended up going in.”

The second goal came from an indirect free kick due to a pass back. Emporia’s defender, in trying to clear the ball from their area, accidentally kicked it to their goalkeeper who caught it. This resulted in an indirect free kick about five yards from the goal line, which Snowden put in the bottom left corner.

“It’s tough,” Sanchez said. “I would be frustrated with the call too, he is trying to clear it out and miss hit it… normally if it’s just a little deflection they let it slide but since it was a break away situation it’s a totally different scenario.”

Manhattan is now 6-1-4 and will play Hayden away on Tuesday and Topeka High at home on Thursday next week, both games that the team expects to win.