Northside 1, Bryant 0

BOYS SOCCER – Northside continues its surprising start to its season, as the Grizzlies won their 7A-Central opener Tuesday night at Mayo-Thompson Stadium.

The lone goal was scored with just under 25 minutes left in the game, as Ricky Iturriaga got a pass off a corner kick from teammate Luis Paredes and delivered a strong kick which landed in the upper right corner of the net. That goal stood as the Grizzlies were able to finish off the shutout.

"Other than that (the goal), I think we made it a little harder on ourselves by not managing to win balls in the middle," Northside coach Mauricio Maciel said. "I do think we have a better midfield player than they do, but we were just turning the ball over way too much where we would give them a chance. If we manage to take that away from many teams, we should be in good shape; we've just got to minimize the turnovers in the middle."

Grizzly goalkeepers Milton Hernandez and Chuy Parga, both seniors, combined for the shutout as Hernandez played the first half and Parga the second half. Maciel added junior midfielder Jose Paredes was able to do a bit of the "dirty work" in the middle, getting a lot of possessions back for the Grizzlies in the middle.

The win improves the Grizzlies to 7-1 overall and 1-0 in the conference.

"We have a couple of freshmen that have been coming in and giving us good minutes," Maciel said. "(Tuesday), we had one of our starting center/mids sick with the flu, but we had the young ones fill in a little bit here and there, making us a little bit more well-rounded."

Northside continues 7A-Central play today with a road game at Little Rock Central.
