W. Alamance 4, Asheboro 3

Ray Criscoe

Randolph Hub

MATTHEWS — It looked so promising.

After a so-so start, Asheboro found its groove and put up three goals to go into halftime with a 3-0 lead in its 3-A championship game match with Western Alamance Saturday night in the Mecklenburg County Sportsplex in Matthews.

Shots in the box from Cam Letterlough and Diego Bustamante, sandwiched around Ozmar Martinez’s left-foot curl into the upper left of the goal from distance, provided that cushion. 

But what felt like an inevitable coronation for the overflowing Asheboro High School crowd of the school’s first state title in soccer turned instead into the stuff of nightmares as the Warriors rallied for a 4-3 win in overtime.

Perhaps the signs were there just before the start of the second half. As Asheboro’s players were gathering in the middle of their side of the field, star striker Cam Letterlough was lagging behind, on the sideline seemingly trying to stretch out his legs.

Meanwhile, near midfield, with most Warriors players already huddling up, the last two approached: Omar Alvarez had his arm around the shoulder of goalkeeper Eamon Hipps as they walked, apparently to try to both console and pump him up as he appeared to be wiping his eyes.

Before the game was over, both scenes proved prophetic.

As the second half began with Asheboro in possession, the Warriors came out with their hair on fire. They sprinted toward every ball, every pass. And the sudden onslaught of pressure had its effect.

A turnover led to a shot from Noah Barrett which hit the crossbar, ricocheted down into the ground and then bounced back up into the goal. Forty seconds into the second half, it was suddenly 3-1.

Four minutes later, a yellow card set up a free kick from about 40 yards out. A long curling shot by Jerson Hernandez led to a rebound header by Grant Bacchus to make it 3-2 at the 35:19 mark.

The game was on. 

“We came out of halftime overconfident,” Blue Comets Head Coach Nick Arroyo said. “We just got shook out of our game. And you lose one of your starting strikers with an injury, who’s trying to play through it … it’s tough.”

It didn’t take long for that bad news to begin to sink in. Letterlough, the nation’s leading scorer this season who collected his 78th goal in the first half, came off the pitch with 32 minutes left in the half.

He stayed out for about 10 minutes of gametime. 

“It was during the second half,” Letterlough said. “I was just running and I felt something in my hamstring. I tried to play through it but I couldn’t, so I went off to the sideline, tried to ice it up, do as much as I can to get back on that field.”

After he came back in, it was apparent he wasn’t the same. On more than one occasion, he had to pull up from a run at the ball; once he crumpled onto the field, just unable to continue. But he kept feeling better and talking his way back onto the pitch.

“It’s the last game of the season, the state championship final, so obviously I’m going to try to play through the injury,” he said. “I tried my best, I gave it my all, but at the end of the day, there was really nothing else I could do about it.”

Asheboro’s attack suffered as they seemed a bit rudderless without Letterlough’s half of the Blue Comets’ dangerous 1-2 punch with Bustamante.

“When you have somebody like Bustamante and you pair him with someone like Cam, I don’t know that there will ever be a pair like that again,” Arroyo said. “When one of them goes down, regardless of which one it is, you start scrambling trying to find someone else but the whole team felt it. You could see it in their face, the way they started playing. When you lose Cameron, the whole team just took a hit to the heart instantly.”

As the game wore on, the drama turned to whether Asheboro could hold onto its one-goal edge long enough to claim the crown.

The Blue Comets nearly pulled it off. In the face of nearly 10 free kicks for the Warriors in the second half on Asheboro’s side of the field, nearly all of them from distance where straight long-distance strikes were sent into the box to taller Warrior teammates and causing distress for the AHS keeper and fans, the lead stayed safe … 10 minutes left, 7 minutes, four minutes …

Finally, one of those long free kicks, this one just inside midfield, created a loose ball that Barrett shot low past a crowd into the goal. It’s likely the AHS keeper didn’t even see the ball until it was in the net.

“I could talk about the positioning of those and the frequency of those, but I’ll leave that off the record,” Arroyo said of the free kick barrage. “The fact is they have height. We weren’t finding the ball and cleaning it up quickly enough. That’s not on any individual person. We practice that all year long. In the playoffs, we only allowed two goals before today, and both were PKs. 

“Tonight in the second half, I don’t know how to explain it myself. Maybe when I watch the film back I can start seeing stuff. I don’t understand it. It doesn’t make any sense that we dropped our level so drastically.”

Next up was overtime. The plan: Two 10-minute periods played in their entirety; if tied, then two five-minute periods of sudden death. Then penalty kicks if the score was still tied.

However, the Warriors wasted little time grabbing the lead, a long throw-in leading to another ball not cleared from a crowded box before Barrett — eventually named the game’s MVP for his hat trick — again found an opening in the crowd for the 4-3 lead at the 8:23 mark of the first overtime.

Asheboro did get some shots off in the remaining time, but this time Hipps was up to the task with a couple of terrific saves, including the one that sealed the win in the final minute of the second 10-minute OT period. He leaped to try to keep a ball in play to avoid a corner, but, as he was falling past the end line, he tipped it into the ground of play in front of the unprotected goal. Asheboro’s Jonathan Alonso darted for the ball but Hipps recovered and got back on it just in time.

Another of Asheboro’s best late chances came with 7:10 left in the second OT when Letterlough was granted a free kick five yards outside the right side of the Warriors’ box. However, his shot went into the ground as he just couldn’t get the normal push he needed from his plant leg.

Despite the loss, Letterlough said afterwards he was happy to have had this chance to play this year after not being able to play the last two years because of his soccer club commitments.

“It was worth it,” he said of his senior season, in which he finished with the fourth-most goals scored in a season in state history. “We had 20 seniors waiting for this year. I have made a lot of achievements, but the team around me is the reason why I have made these achievements. The supporters I have, the family, the friends, this is why I am where I am today, because of them.”

In reaching its first final, Asheboro finished its history-making season 27-3. Among the wins was a 4-3 victory over this same Western Alamance team back in August, a game with an eerily similar script. Asheboro had a 3-1 lead at halftime in that one, then held on for the win. It was the Warriors’ only loss in a 25-1 campaign, with seven of the 16 goals they gave up on the year scored by Asheboro.

“This senior class is a special one,” Arroyo said. “Not just because we were good. These guys are like sons to me. And it hurts to know that not only is the season over without the result we wanted, but also that I won’t have them back. It’s tough. 

“You’ve got guys like Bustamante who’s been on the striking force of our team for four years and you’ve got Cam who played for me his freshman year. When he came back his senior year with one goal in mind and to get this far and lose it is tough. At the end of the day we made history for Asheboro High School, we’ve never made it this far, but I felt we let one slip through our fingers today.”