Tigers fall in home finale, face Riverton Monday

Fort Scott’s Tanner Fox (17) and Paola’s James Newberry vie for control of the ball during the first half of play in Thursday’s match.

Scott Nuzum/Tribune

Fort Scott High’s soccer team played its final home match Thursday at Ellis Park, falling to Paola by a 2-0 score.

The Tigers finished the regular season with a record of 2-14. However, their first-round opponent in the Class 4-3-2-1A East Regional No. 1 Tournament on Monday will be Riverton, the team that Fort Scott has both of its wins over this season. Fort Scott beat Riverton 3-1 at Ellis Park on September 12 and again on Tuesday on the road in double overtime, 4-3. The Rams took a 2-1 win over the Tigers in a shootout in the first round of the Coffeyville Tornado Tournament on September 16.

A win on Monday would move the Tigers into a second-round match on Tuesday at top-seeded Coffeyville (13-1-0), the Southeast Kansas League champion. It would also keep the Tigers from tying with the 2003 and 2015 teams for the fewest wins in a season.

Fort Scott and Paola (8-8) didn’t have as wide of a gap in possession time as the final score would indicate. The Tigers played in the Paola half somewhere between 40 and 45 percent of the time. But the Panthers were able to get more scoring chances and Fort Scott had to hunker down on defense early in the match.

Kyle Montojo came to the aid of his goalie, Henry Witt, twice in the first half. Witt came out to stop the initial charge on a Paola player but Montojo got back to the goal to kick the ball away after either a deflection or a pass. Taylor himself had to make a pair of point-blank saves in the fifth minute of play.

But Paola got off four times as many shots as the Tigers, 28 to 7, and had three times the number of shots on goal, 18-6, and that eventually got the Panthers on the board when Ryan Wokutch scored in the 40th minute of play just moments before halftime.

Ian Heid scored Paola’s second goal in the 66th minute off an assist by James Newberry.

In the final junior varsity contest of the season, Paola salvaged a 1-1 tie with a goal in the 36th minute of a 40-minute match. DeAndre Martinez scored the Tigers’ goal during the 27th minute.

Tuesday’s other Regional game pits Paola against fourth-seeded Spring Hill (10-6) at Spring Hill. Tuesday’s winners play for the Regional title at Coffeyville on Thursday.

Independence (10-4-2) is the No. 3 seed and hosts Baldwin in an East No. 2 Regional game Tuesday at 5 p.m.

Goalkeepers

P — Bevis, 6 shots, 6 saves, no goals. FS —Witt, 18 shots, 16 saves, 2 goals.

Goals

P — Wokutch, 40th min.

P — Heid (Newberry), 66th min.