BARTOW ― There was just too much Bartow Yellow Jacket talent and defense for the Kathleen Red Devils Thursday night at Bartow Memorial Stadium in the Class 6A District 6 quarterfinals.
No. 4 seed Bartow (6-4-1) trounced No. 5 seed Kathleen (3-10) by a score of 8-0 with more than eight minutes remaining due to a blowout rule. The Yellow Jackets will now take on the No. 1 seed Monday at Lake Gibson (12-5), who had a bye. Lake Gibson is also the same team that eliminated Bartow last year in the playoffs.
Goal scorers included Luis Perez-Duarte, Chance Campbell, Kevin Rivera-Franco, Nathan Saint Simon, Seth Adkins, Joseangel Morales and Sebastian Brock, who had two goals.
It was a spectacular win for Bartow in the playoffs in the first round of districts. But normally Bartow has a first-round bye, which this year is held by Lake Gibson. Still, Bartow head coach Richard Saunders was impressed by the shutout.
“I think we did well. I think we’re going to have to do a whole lot better if we’re going to advance out of our next game, so we’re definitely going to have to pick up the intensity level,” Saunders said. “I think things just worked out well for us in this game.”
It worked out well for the team because Bartow’s defense communicated and often diffused potential threats.
And the midfield did an exceptional job of controlling the field, not getting too far up or too far back. Midfielder Luis Cortez-Ovando led that strategy.
“…I always just slowed down the game…, so I was just holding the ball and looking for passes on the outside — just slowing down the game,” Cortez-Ovando said. “…We saw the long ball wasn’t working, so we started possessing it more. We possessed through the middle. And we used the middle, the outside middles and all that stuff.”
Controlling the middle set players up such as Campbell, the striker, who scored after 16:05 of the first half. This is Campbell’s 15th goal of the season.
“Our center back drove down the line, and it attracted most of the center backs and outside backs. And he just put a beautiful ball, a curl, and it just skipped right over the fence and I knew where to put it,” Campbell said.
Midfielder Kevin Rivera-Franco scored after 18:54 in the second half, which was his first goal of his senior season.
“I saw the runner running across, and got enough leg to skip under the goalkeeper’s mistake,” Rivera-Franco said.