BELCHERTOWN — Two second-half goals scored within two minutes helped sixth-seeded Amherst A come from behind to beat No. 3 Belchertown North, 2-1, in a Pioneer Valley Summer Soccer League Boys A Division quarterfinal on Tuesday.
Amherst’s Vic Wellman tied the game off a rebound 25 minutes into the second half at Jabish Middle School. Tate Rietkerk took a shot from close range, but Belchertown goalkeeper Sean McCarthy stopped it. McCarthy did not secure the ball as it landed at Wellman’s feet.
“Just a good rebound,” Wellman said. “Just kind of shows how hard work pays off. You’ve just got to keep kicking, keep fighting.”
Less than two minutes later, Theo Scott gave Amherst the lead. Lucas Willocq assisted on the goal, passing the ball to Scott inside the penalty area.
Scott dribbled past one defender and blasted the ball into the right side of the goal as McCarthy (three saves) was coming off his line.
“Lucas just chipped it in,” Scott said. “I knew where the goal was. I knew there were a bunch of men on me so I just turned, beat one and then slotted it in.”
Belchertown (8-3-1) had eight corner kicks in the game. With 10 minutes left to play, one corner kick landed just in front of the goal and deflected off an Amherst (6-5-1) defender out of bounds, missing the goal by inches.
Belchertown took a 1-0 lead seven minutes into the second half.
“Belchertown’s a great opponent,” Amherst coach Todd Felton said. “It’s always a hard-fought game and we saw that this game could go either way. This group of guys knows what it means to fight and play hard so they weren’t worried (after going down 1-0).”
Neither team had any shots on goal during the first 20 minutes of the game.
Belchertown had four shots on goal to close to the first half. Two came from Alexander Szarkowski, while Nolan Vogel and Cyrus Raines each had one. Amherst keeper Lucas Morales-Fernandez made all four saves and finished with five in the game.
Felton substituted most of his players into the game during the first half, but stuck with a more consistent lineup in the second half.
“We’ve been trying to have pretty equal playing time throughout the summer season. That’s been a high priority,” Felton said. “Just getting everybody on the field, getting everybody some good playing time. So we did through most of the first half, so that’s why the first half was pretty evenly matched. In the second half we really substituted more strategically.”