Vikings top LC
Coeur d’Alene’s 2-0 Inland Empire League victory Thursday at Lake City capped an undefeated regular season for the Vikings.
The celebration in the blue-and-white camp, however, had a bit of a hollow feeling.
This year’s new standings system – three points for a win, one for a tie – had already awarded idle Sandpoint (10-1-1 IEL), not Coeur d’Alene (9-0-3), the league crown, despite the fact that the Vikings beat the Bulldogs once and tied them once earlier in the year.
CdA coach Eric Louis admitted being a bit disappointed for his players not achieving their goal of a league title, but said there was still plenty of satisfaction in the victory.
“I don’t think there’s any such thing as meaningless competition between the two schools,” said Louis, whose team would have been the league champ under last year’s criteria.
The match went scoreless through the first 66 minutes, which featured a pair of nearly identical great saves from freshman LC keeper Nick Higgs and CdA’s Marc Hilbert.
In the 67th, Cameron Vandall’s corner found John Latorre in front of the far post. Latorre headed it beautifully on goal, but it hit the post and caromed across the goalmouth before Jordan Eborall ripped it past Higgs into the top of the goal to put the Vikings up 1-0.
Sophomore forward Forrest Walker finished up the scoring in the 75th minute, taking a lead pass across the top of the box from Robbie Astin and left-footing a laser to the right of a diving Higgs.
“Elsewhere, the third and fourth seeds were set for next week’s single-elimination 5A Region I tournament: No. 4 Post Falls (2-8-2) travels to Coeur d’Alene and No. 3 Lewiston (3-8-1) visits No. 2 Lake City (8-5-1). Both winner-to-state matches are scheduled for Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. The winners play Oct. 13 to decide seeding for the state tournament Oct. 18-20 at Lake City.
“In other league action, Matt Martin scored his second goal of the match in the 52nd minute to help Moscow (9-4-1, 6-4-1) preserve a 2-2 tie with Post Falls (3-10-2 overall) in Moscow. … Kyle Hoffman scored a goal and assisted on three others to lead Lewiston (3-11-1 overall) to a 6-0 victory over Lakeland (1-13-2, 0-11-1) in Lewiston.