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NEW CANAAN, Conn. – The New Canaan High School boys soccer team, the last unbeaten boys soccer team in the conference, fell for the first time this season in a 3-1 loss to Wilton High School on Wednesday.
Wilton has been something of a “giant killer” lately, handing a previously undefeated team its first loss for the second time in three games.
“It wasn’t a fun night, but it’s a new day tomorrow. We just have to be positive and move forward,” New Canaan head coach Victor Sanchez said. “We shouldn’t kill ourselves over one loss, but at the same time we should learn from this.”
After Wilton and New Canaan battled to a scoreless clean sheet in the first half, the floodgates opened for a wild, four-goal second period.
Wilton’s Kyle Dedrick opened the game’s scoring just two minutes into the second half off of a short cross pass in the box from teammate David Brown. The score held at 1-0 for the next 33 minutes until New Canaan equalized on a Rob Valente header, assisted by Valente’s older brother, Steven.
The two teams each had chances to score the go-ahead goal, but it came down to a case of being in the right place at the right time to determine the winner.
John “Mac” McReynolds somehow got a foot on the ball during a huge scrum in front of the net with less than five minutes to play. The ball trickled through the crowd and into the net for the deciding goal.
Brown blasted an insurance goal past the New Canaan goalkeeper two-and-a-half minutes later to secure the victory.
“I definitely knew this was going to be a tough battle,” Sanchez said. “We knew that we wouldn’t take care of business in the first 40 minutes. We knew it would be a full 80-minute game and it would be a technical and a physical challenge.”
New Canaan (8-1-2) hosts Stamford on Friday in a 4 p.m. match.
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