Roberts Leads Mounties Past Lenox
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – Kofi Roberts scored five goals, and the Mount Greylock boys soccer team Thursday scored a Moriarty Division title with a 6-1 win over Lenox.
The night marked a career-high in scoring for the Mounties’ senior captain and marked the team’s highest production since Sept. 29 at BCC against Taconic.
In the five games since that night, Mount Greylock went 1-2-1 with just six goals.
But the Mounties offense was firing on all cylinders under the lights on its new varsity field.
“The midfield pressure was great,” Roberts said. “Players like Luca Mellow-Bartels, Tate Carothers, they’re putting in great effort winning the ball, finding a pass and allowing us to get open in front of the goal and put the ball in the net.”
Roberts did just that off a corner kick play in the seventh minute of play.
Everett Crow’s offering from the right-wing corner was headed out of the 6-yard box by a Lenox defender, but Roberts got the ball on the left side of the 18, took a couple of touches and fired a shot that squeezed between a diving Jason Sibley (six saves) and the post to make it 1-0.
Nine minutes later, Roberts scored again, forcing Lenox to call a timeout.
The Mounties’ Everett Bayliss nearly scored from the top of the 18 in the 22nd minute, but his try caromed off the crossbar. A few minutes later, he did not miss, charging toward the goal after getting a loose ball off a Lenox defender inside the penalty area and scoring to make it 3-0 at half-time.
The second half was all Roberts, who found the net three times in a span of just fewer than seven minutes before Mount Greylock coach Chris Kapiloff found a way to stop him: ending his night with 26 minutes, 2 seconds left to play.
“Kofi is very fast, his ball skills are very, very good,” Kapiloff said. “Teams look for him, but his touch was on tonight, his speed was on tonight, and he was one of the people who I challenged [after a 3-1 loss to Lenox on Sept. 22] to be better for the rest of the year.
“Clearly, he’s one of our key playmakers, and three or four weeks ago, he started working on my challenge for him to really take the reins.”
Kapiloff called that loss in Lenox a turning point for his team, which was 4-3 after falling to the Millionaires and has gone 4-2-1 since.
“Our guys tonight, we were mentally focused and prepared to play,” Kapiloff said. “They boys remembered the last time. They were pretty unhappy with the result.”
This time around, it was Lenox (4-7-4) with the unhappy bus ride home. But the Millionaires, who finish the regular season on Monday at Southwick, will be gunning for a rematch against the Mounties in next week’s Western Massachusetts Class C Tournament.
“Unfortunately, this was not unexpected, given they fact that, you know – home field advantage, a solid team, a little more organized tonight,” Lenox coach Jedd Hall said. “We’re looking ahead. At this point, it’s been a very uneven season. I’m looking more at tournament play and Western Mass and, quite honestly, I’m hoping for a rematch with Greylock in about a week.”
The Millionaires Thursday put eight shots on Mount Greylock keeper Ward Bianchi. Tristan Pritchard scored in the 71st minute with an assist from Dylan Blake to help Lenox avoid the shutout.
Mount Greylock, which started the night as the top seed in the Class C field, plays its last regular season game on Monday at home against Pittsfield.