City High scores twice late to beat Kennedy

IOWA CITY—Two of the Mississippi Valley Conference boys' soccer heavyweights squared off Tuesday, and it took until the 65th minute before one had an advantage. City High sophomore Gaby Baloci finally found the net with 14:58 to play, and the ninth-ranked Little Hawks added a PK goal in the 78th minute to beat No. 3 Kennedy 2-0.

After some positional tweaking at halftime Baloci was running free in the second half and, along with John Havugarurema, continually put pressure on the Cougars' goal. Baloci had three shots in the previous couple minutes but finally connected on a cross from Drew Cornwell on the right side.

'It was just like my passes in practice,' Cornwell said. 'I work on crossing and trying to find the guy running in. Luckily Gaby was sneaking behind there. He's really quick. He's really agile in the middle. It's hard to keep up with him."

"My teammates really helped me. My goal to go forward is to score, that's why I like to go forward,' Baloci said. 'That was a nice cross. I really appreciated that.'

Pushing the sophomore up top was one of Coach Jose Fajardo's halftime adjustments.

'Even in the first half we felt comfortable with the game,' Fajardo said. 'In the second half we put more pressure on; we had the ball longer; we created more chances. We changed a couple things in the midfield. We changed Gaby up top. We were not defending well enough in the midfield.'

Kennedy co-coach Mike Robertson said the second-half pressure by City High was 'somewhat the nature of the game.'

'City High is obviously a good team,' he said. 'I think there were some things tactically that we should have done differently. That probably would have made that change a little bit.'

Kennedy goalie Nathan Althoff made several gutsy saves on shots, one with his face. He was particularly adept at coming out to meet an undefended forward. He was able to cut off the angle and somehow deflect shots time after time.

Kennedy was the only other team besides West that defeated City High a year ago, and even Balochi, a newcomer, was aware of that.

Kennedy was a state semifinalist, and City was the state runner-up.

City High's defense kept the Cougars at bay for the most part. Kennedy had a flurry of shots at the end of the first half but couldn't mount much of an attack in the second half.

'I think we were just trying to draw back and we felt like if someone was coming down the side or Ryan Walker, he's really skilled in the middle, we tried to put pressure on them there,' City defender Adam Nicholson said. 'We kind of held off to see what they were going to do. We got the header balls out.'

'We played too narrow,' Robertson said. 'We needed to use our width a little bit more. We needed to play a little bit more to feet up top. That would have allowed us to do some more things offensively.'

Nicholson scored the second goal on PK with 1:20 left in the game.Kennedy is 1-1 both overall and in MVC play. City High is 3-0 in the MVC and 4-1 overall.