Severna Park’s Ryan Nelson produced the game-winning goal against the Thunder at Hawthorne Park. He is shown here putting a move on the defender as he pushes the ball up field.

By Amy Russell

The Severna Park Sting 11U boys soccer team earned its fourth win of the season on October 3o with a, 1-0, last minute victory over the Thunder S.C. Gunners. A battle of the defenses for most of the match, the Sting and Thunder went scoreless until with just four seconds left on the clock Ryan Nelson saw an opening and took a quick shot that was deflected just over the out-stretched goalie, high into the back of the net.

"We preach and preach and preach to just keep shooting," said head coach Mike Aman afterward. "O ne of the biggest things we taught this year is when you get a step you take a shot and that’s what Ryan did. He got a step, he saw the goal and he took a shot. We tell the boys, if you keep shooting something is eventually going to happen."

Leading the offense along with Nelson were Joseph Aman, Jake Howell, Kevin Kobosko and Jack Metzger. William Hoffman, Mason Jones and Aaron Zilke manned the defense, anchored by Burton Gesner in goal.

"My defense is rock solid every week," said Aman. "We make a few mental mistakes here and there but we have a very driven defense, they don’t like to be scored on."

Alexander Fisher, Cameron Ehnat, Benjamin Trevor and Robert Avedon also contributed to the win.

Much like the win over the Thunder, a last minute shot won the game the week before too, building to what is now a three-game winning streak in the Baltimore Beltway Soccer League.

The team, most notably solid as a tournament team, is now 4-2-1 in the league - a strong record that started with an outstanding debut considering the team had never played together before.

"We started the season with the Crofton Shoot Out," recalled Aman. "It was the first time the boys ever played in a game together as a team. We went 4-0 in that tournament and won it, so we started the season off pretty well."

After the tournament the teamed took a couple of outings to really mesh, but have shown steady improvement over the course of the season.

"We came out a little shaky the first week of the season but I think as the weeks have gone by we’ve gotten progressively better as a team," said Aman. "We’ve started playing more team ball instead of individual. We have a lot of good players and I think once we started putting it all together, that talent has really shown. You keep fighting and you keep winning and that’s what we’ve been trying to do."

Earlier this month the team took second place in the SAC tournament, and Aman says he hopes to continue that success in the Mountain Road tournament in a couple of weeks.

"This team really seems to step up in tournaments," said Aman. "I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ll do at Mountain Road. It’s a good tournament… there are usually a lot of good competitive teams. I think it’ll be a good judge of how far we’ve come from start to finish."