AHS, SWR advance into third-round playoff games at home Thursday

Asheboro and Southwestern Randolph advanced to the third round in the soccer playoffs Tuesday night. Here’s a brief recap:

3-A:  Asheboro 5, Northwest Cabarrus 0

ASHEBORO — Cam Letterlough scored two goals to run his season-total to 71 and Diego Bustamante scored a pair of goals to spark Asheboro High School to a 5-0 win over Northwest Cabarrus in the second round of the state 3-A West Regional Tournament.

The victory was the 20th straight for the Blue Comets, who improved to 24-2 overall.
Letterlough scored at the 30:53 mark for the lead and Bustamante scored his first of the game at 13:03 before Letterlough added his second at 8:23.

Cristian Raygadas and Bustamante added second-half goals in the game totally dominated by the Blue Comets.

Top-seeded AHS, which recorded a 9-0 victory over West Charlotte in the first round, will host No. 9 Pisgah  (14-7-2) Thursday at 6 p.m.

— Dennis Garcia

2-A:  SW Randolph 5, Trinity 1

ASHEBORO — It took a while for Southwestern Randolph’s soccer team to get going against fellow PAC rival Trinity, a team it had beaten twice in the regular season already, but once it got going, the goals started coming. 

The result was a 5-1 victory and a spot in the third round of the 2-A state tournament at home Thursday night. The top-seed Cougars (22-2) will face No. 25 seed Bandys (15-9-1), which defeated No. 24 seed Hendersonville 2-1 Tuesday night. Bandys had knocked off No. 8 Salisbury 1-0 in the first round and Hendersonville had upset No. 9 Shelby 3-1.

Trinity, which finished the season 15-6-3, used its front-line speed to come out hard and fast against the Cougars and narrowly missed a couple of early chances. The half turned, though, when Cougars leading scorer Fernando Hernandez broke away from a jersey tug and scored with just under 20 minutes left.

Less than 7 minutes into the second half, the game was tied when the Cougars scored on themselves with a high defensive header toward the goalie that hit short of the keeper and bounced over his head and into the net. 

But Hernandez erased that disappointment just two minutes later, weaving in from the left and launching a rocket inside the box for a 2-1 lead at the 36:08 mark.

Soon after, the game began to disintegrate into a cardfest, begun when a Trinity player was ejected with 30 minutes left after getting a red card against Yael Rebollar Ortiz, who was decleated while streaking down the sideline. Over the remainder of the game, two yellows were directed toward Trinity's bench and a handful of yellows were passed out to players on both teams. A fan on the visitors side was eventually escorted from the stadium while the SWR bench was given a stern warning from its own coach toward the end about talking to opposing players on the field.

In the midst of all that, Ortiz scored a pair of goals. The first, at 27:42, came on a free kick set up by one of those yellows about 25 yards out that Ortiz put past a wall set up to block it. The second came at 13:29 when Ortiz used some deft moves between players on the left side of the goal that bought him enough space to to bury one past the keeper into the in right side of the net.

Aaron Avina moved in and out around a pair of middle defenders to score the fifth goal with 2:21 left.

— Ray Criscoe

1-A:  Union Academy 6, Uwharrie Charter 1

MONROE — The only other Randolph County team in the playoffs was No. 24 Uwharrie Charter, which had upset No. 9 Highland 4-1 in the first round. But it lost in the second to No. 8 Union Academy in the second round 6-1.