Blue Comets win wild affair to reach 3-A state title game

ASHEBORO — Cam Letterlough intently studied his options.

The Asheboro High School soccer standout was given a penalty kick with 17 minutes and 38 seconds left in regulation of Tuesday night’s West Regional championship game against AC Reynolds with the game tied at 1.

The Rockets had just tied the game on a penalty kick 20 seconds before Letterlough had the opportunity to give the Blue Comets the lead again. And just like every AHS coach, player and fan in the jammed homeside of  Lee J. Stone Stadium believed, the Blue Comets were going to retake the lead.

“There's a lot of people watching and I handled the pressure really well,” said Letterlough, whose PK goal gave the Blue Comets the lead for good in AHS’ wild 4-2 victory, a win that featured five goals in the final 18 minutes of action. “It was amazing. I faked to go left and went right. Moments like this really don’t phase me.”

Letterlough finished with three goals as the Blue Comets won their 22nd straight game, improved to 26-2 on the season and earned their first-ever berth in the state championship game. AHS, the top seed from the West Region, will play Western Alamance, the number two seed from the East, which defeated the Southern School of Energy and Sustainability 3-1 in the East Region final.

“We said from the beginning, at our very first workout as a group, the endgame is to make it to states and bring it home to Asheboro,” AHS coach Nick Arroyo said. “After we had that conversation, I said we are not going to talk about that again until we are going to states. Now they can officially talk about it.”

Letterlough’s three goals bumped his season total to a national-best 77 on the season, the fourth-best single-season record in NCHSAA history.

“Cam is just a different kid,” Arroyo said. “Coaches tell me after the games you can’t mark him. Even when they double-mark him, he finds a way. Every time he touched the ball tonight there were three or four guys who came straight at him and he still found a way to score three goals.”

Letterlough, as has been the case all season, had plenty of help. Diego Bustamante broke a scoreless tie when he netted a rebound off a free kick by Letterlough at the 22:18 mark of the first half, goalie Giovanni Nunez made a number of solid saves as the Blue Comets nursed that 1-0 lead for nearly 40 minutes, and Braulio Gutierrez and Alexander Perez sparked a defense that kept the Rockets at bay.

“It feels amazing,” Gutierrez said. “You dream about these types of moments all your childhood. You want to play for your school, represent your town. It feels really great. We came in strong-minded. We wanted to win this game and go to states and show out for our community.”

Nunez stopped a number of mid-range line drive shot attempts, helping the Blue Comets keep that slim lead. 
“We came into the game really confident,” Nunez said. “You can’t come in nervous as a goalie. Making that first save always gives me confidence.”

After the Rockets (21-2-1) and the Blue Comets traded penalty kick goals, Juan Macias had a free kick that went from right to left and found its way to Letterlough, who knocked it into the net for a 3-1 lead with 12:12 to play.

“I was thinking about finding someone who could score,” Macias said of his free kick. “This feels amazing. I am so proud of everybody. The bench players, the starters, the coaches. Everyone.”

Letterlough scored again with about seven minutes to play, which was more than enough to offset another penalty kick goal for AC Reynolds with about five minutes to play.

“We just followed our defensive principles, our attacking principles, that’s what it came to,” said Letterlough, who added there’s one more to get. “We worked hard, we had a hard season. We work every single day, but the job is not finished. We have one more to go. We have made so much history this season, but it’s not done yet.”

There really is just one more to go.