skip navigation

Hammerheads Turn Corner, Turn Back Clock

By CHARLIE CORR - charlie.corr@uslsoccer.com, 06/04/16, 12:30PM EDT

Share

Wilmington enjoys first winning streak in more than two years


Photo courtesy of Wilmington Hammerheads FC

Thanks to the late heroics of Kyle Parker, Wilmington Hammerheads FC is enjoying something that has not happened in more than two years – a league winning streak.

Parker’s brace and stoppage-time game-winner lifted Wilmington to a 3-2 victory against the Harrisburg City Islanders on Friday at Legion Stadium. Combine that with Wilmington’s 3-1 road win against Toronto FC II on May 29, and the 4-4-3 Hammerheads have posted consecutive victories for the first time since a four-game winning streak in May of 2014.

“All the hard work has started to pay off,” Parker said. “Especially throughout the beginning of the season, we were playing well, but some things weren’t falling for us and we knew they were going to start. This week was that starting point for us.”

Wilmington has already eclipsed its three-win total from a disappointing 2015 USL season. Since mid-May, the Hammerheads have posted four wins – the back-to-back wins against TFCII and Harrisburg and two wins in the 2016 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, most recently a 2-1 win at Miami FC on Wednesday to advance to the Fourth Round.

“We’ve definitely seen the team turn the corner, in great part due to the system and this winning mentality,” midfielder Zev Taublieb said. “It takes very hardworking people to go into the 90th minute and get a winner. … It’s a game-by-game mentality. We weren’t thinking tonight, ‘Hey we’ve won two, let’s go win the third.’ It was, ‘Tonight we’re going to win. Tonight we’re at home.’ Game-by-game, that’s how you treat every match.”

“When you’re in a run like we are at the moment, things seem to bounce for you,” Wilmington Head Coach Mark Briggs said. “We changed the formation the last 10 or 15 minutes and put two up top and it just gave us an extra body up top, a little more pressure and we got the ball we were working for.”

Next Saturday, the Hammerheads face perhaps their toughest test of the season traveling to face Eastern Conference-leading Louisville City FC. Wilmington has certainly gained some needed confidence heading in with three wins in a six-day stretch.

“We’ve turned a corner, and the players have turned a corner themselves,” Briggs said. “This is all them. This is all their hard work, their desire to win a game of football. Credit to them.”