Carolina RailHawks News Release - www.carolinarailhawks.com
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
CARY, NC -- The Carolina RailHawks earned another victory on Tuesday night by denying an amateur team the possibility of an upset in the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup. Carolina hosted RWB Adria, an amateur team from Chicago, at SAS Soccer Park in front of a crowd of 3,062 fans. The final was 4-1 for the RailHawks in a match that was dominated by the host side for most of the 90 minutes.
The RailHawks started early, when Jonny Steele played a ball in to Joey Worthen who easily shot it into the top right corner of the net, past RWB goalkeeper Gazibara in the 5th minute. Carolina continued to attack with a couple of shots by Maher and Jonny Steele, and almost added a second tally with Maher in the 21st minute that was called offside.
“It felt really good,” said Joey Worthen about his shot. “Especially in games like this where you want to score one early to set the pace. We got ours in and the others just started coming.”
It was up to Connally Edozien to keep them coming and he did. In a repeat of the phenomenal performance that earned him USL Player of the Week honors, Edozien started getting balls in the box. The first shot went out, but the second one, assisted again by Jonny Steele, was headed in behind the goalkeeper in the 31st minute.
Just three minutes later Connally Edozien with a little help from Anthony Maher stole the ball from a RWB defender and took it right back towards Gazibara shooting it right behind him and bringing the score to 3-0 for the RailHawks.
The rest of the first half and the first twenty minutes of the second half saw the RailHawks continuing to look for another tally. Shots continued to keep Gazibara busy, but it wasn’t until the 64th minute that the ball found the back of the net again. Caleb Norkus stole a ball in the RailHawks half of the field, played it to Marcio Leite, who played right back to Norkus. Caleb took the shot from right inside the box; the ball hit the inside of the right post and tumbled into the back of the net.
RWB Adria scored their lone goal during a momentary lapse of the RailHawks. Carlos Carrillo slipped through the Carolina Defense and took a right footed blast past Chris McClellan to fix the score on 4-1. In the end the RailHawks had a total of 19 shots and no saves and RWB Adria had 4 shots and 9 saves.
“We did everything right tonight,” said RailHawks head coach Scott Schweitzer. “This was the first US Open Cup game in franchise history and we came away with a win. We need to continue to play for the full ninety minutes, unlike tonight, and avoid goals scored against us, but everything worked well in the end.”
In the second round of the US Open Cup, the RailHawks will now face the winner of the match between the Cincinnati Kings and Bavarian SC on June 26th at SAS Soccer Park in Cary. Before they get to that, however, Carolina will host the Seattle Sounders on June 15th at SAS Stadium at 8:00 PM.
