JERSEYVILLE - For the second time this season, the Civic Memorial High School Eagles faced off against the Jersey Community High School Panthers in their soccer game on at 5:00 p.m. this Thursday.
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After being defeated at 7-0 the first time around, the Eagles were diligent to put up a fight during the rematch.
“Last time, they totally dominated us,” CM Head Coach Derek Jarman said.
Before this match, the team has been struggling to get their feet off of the ground as a team, and held an overall record of 0-6. As the Eagles are a young team, Jarman hopes that with time, his boys gain the potential to perform as well as Jerseyville in their future.
The Panthers, on the other hand, have had a highly successful season so far. Before the match, Jerseyville maintained a 5-1 record, losing only to Waterloo High School 4-1 on Sept. 12.
“CM is much better than when we saw them a few weeks ago,” Jersey Head Coach Scott Burney said.
As the rematch began, Burney said that he felt his team wasn’t entirely proud of their performance during the first match, even though three of his athletes scored four points in the first half.
“For some reason, we didn’t match the intensity of the game,” Burney said.
Jacob Ridenhour scored two goals for the Panthers, and his two teammates Walter Becker and Jacob Witt also assisted in making the score for their team rise to four before half time. However, Burney believes that it was a slow start.
“It took us a while to get going,” Burney said, “We didn’t play to our strengths and that kind of made the score what it was at half.”
Civic Memorial put up quite a fight themselves. Trevor Paynik scored an assisted goal in the first half of the game and did a relatively good job covering their tails during the second half.
“We made a lot of little mistakes, and every time we made a mistake, they put it in the back of our net,” Jarman said.
Over thirty minutes into the second half passed before the Panthers scored their fifth point of the game. Shortly after, Civic Memorial proved that they were not really going down without a fight. With a 
little over a minute left on the clock, the Eagles scored their second and last point of the game. As the final buzzer sounded, the Panthers gained yet another victory with a score of 5-2.
Although the Panthers earned another win under their belt, the team seemed to be quite hard on themselves for the way they played.
“I’m hard on the boys, but the boys are really hard on themselves,” Coach Burney said, “They have high expectations and they didn’t feel like they dominated this game.”
Regardless of their performance, everyone rooting from the audience for the Panthers was excited that they took home another win. At this Saturday’s upcoming face off against East Alton Wood River High School, hopefully the boys can play to their own standard. Civic Memorial will face Highland on the same day.
CLICK HERE OR LOOK BELOW TO VIEW A PHOTO GALLERY OF THE RIVALRY GAME.
