FAIRBORN — After giving up an early goal and being stalled by a lengthy rain delay, the Fairborn boys soccer team decided it was time to score. Senior Adam Knaub had four goals on the way to an 8-1 victory over Trotwood-Madison, Tuesday at Fairborn High School.
“It was an interesting start. We had the ball on their end, pressuring, pressuring. They got one chance down on our end and got tripped up and scored on a PK (penalty kick),” said Fairborn coach Greg Dierker. “It was kind of unfortunate when the weather came in. We were thinking, ‘if we get to half and we’re down, that would be a bad deal.’ But we feel like we can put some goals in, and fortunately the boys came out and really showed what they can do.”
With 28:40 left in the first half, thunder and lightning rolled through the area, causing a delay in the game. Play didn’t resume for over an hour, but Dierker said he wasn’t concerned about injuries after the delay.
“There’s always some worries, but these guys are young enough and they’re in good enough shape that we didn’t really have a whole lot of worries. We had five minutes to warm up, and before that, they were stuffed up in a room. They were cooped up like a bunch of caged animals and they were pretty excited to get out and play. They just needed to get their head in the game and work as a team.”
If the Skyhawks did have any setbacks after the delay, it didn’t last long. With 21:03 left to play in the first half, A.J. Greene had the equalizer goal to tie things up at one. Just under two minutes later, Alex Profitt scored to put Fairborn up 2-1.
With 7:22 left to play in the half, Knaub scored his first of four consecutive goals for Fairborn. He scored again with 4:38 left in the first half, completed the hat trick just under six minutes into the second half and scored one more time three minutes later with 34:47 left to play in the game.
“Adam has amazing speed. He’s got a gift from God that not everyone has,” said Dierker. “We struggled a little bit last year with his work ethic in a game, but this year he’s really putting the work in and getting the goals and opportunities. He’s a weapon that’s nice to have.”
With the large lead, some Fairborn players got in and scored who don’t normally see much play time.
“Everyone wanted to play. We had a couple guys score goals who normally don’t, like Nathan Haywood and Andrew Mellon. It was nice to see some diversity out there,” said Dierker.
Fairborn (2-1-2) returns to action against Greenville at 6 p.m Thursday at Harmon Field. Dierker said he hopes the ‘Hawks continue this type of play.
“We’ve had a good season…we beat a good Tecumseh team and we came back from 3-0 to tie with Greenon. We started kind of messy and then tied it. We’ve only had one bad game against Edgewood. This game [against Trotwood] does give us confidence. We’ve got another game against Greenville that we feel confident about. We’ve got some tough games ahead…but we know we can do it.”
