Beldon reaches 50 career goals, helps Argos eliminate N. Miami

Dragons limit Warriors to 1 shot on goal

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

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Kenyan Beldon Carter Bauman

ARGOS — Kenyan Beldon scored two goals to reach 50 for his career and added two assists, and the Argos boys soccer team’s defense held North Miami to one shot on goal in a 6-0 win in a Class 1A, Sectional 36 semifinal win at Eugene Snyder Field Thursday.

Ayden VanDerWeele, Zach Burns, Xander Binfet and Matthew Umbaugh also scored for Argos, who improved to 14-4. They will next face Lakeland Christian in the sectional final at 7 p.m. Saturday. Lakeland Christian knocked out Winamac 2-0 in the other semifinal.

Defensively, the focus was on North Miami forward Brady Coppler, who scored 19 of his team’s 27 goals on the season and assisted on six of the eight he did not score.

Carter Bauman and Joel Trump kept a watchful eye on him from the Argos back line. Bauman, a sophomore, has had to adapt from a midfield role to a defender role after senior Mekhi Austin suffered a season-ending ankle injury in August.

Argos also shut out Manchester 6-0 Tuesday in the quarterfinals. Bauman and Trump kept top Manchester scorer Isaiah Acosta off the board in that game too. Coach Todd VanDerWeele called the Bauman-Trump defensive pairing a “positive partnership.”

“Very similar to what we did the other night with Acosta,” coach VanDerWeele said of the defensive gameplan. “We tried to make him go sideways. I thought that he was a little bit on an island. We made a lot of mistakes on him in the first half trying to take the ball off his foot. I thought we did a much better job in the second half, and ultimately, we were able to keep him out. He’s big and strong, and he’s maybe not quite as explosive as Acosta, but he’s still explosive, and I think he’s a dangerous player.”

North Miami wanted to take advantage of Coppler’s speed.

“We felt like we might have our best shot as far as an advantage goes is we felt like we had a little more speed up top,” North Miami coach Adam Wolfe said. “We wanted to take advantage of that and just get some through balls, not so much play kickball but give him an opportunity to not allow the defense to collapse on him. We had a couple of times that we made that happen. We just couldn’t capitalize.”

Beldon’s first goal came with nifty footwork through four defenders in the middle of the  field. He beat North Miami goalkeeper Ezekiel Gerstorff with a left-footed shot that careened off the left post and into the back of the net.

Gerstorff robbed Beldon with a diving stop to his right on a shot on a direct kick with 7:23 left in the half, but Beldon came back to make it 2-0 at the 5:29 mark.

The play started when Ayden VanDerWeele intercepted a Gerstorff goal kick near midfield and dropped it off to Beldon, who did the rest, beating Gerstorff with a strong right-footed shot into the back left corner of the net.

His 50 goals put him in the top 10 in Argos soccer history.

“I’ve been tracking it throughout the season,” Beldon said. “I’ve been looking at the top 10. I finally reached it. I had a little drought here and there, but I finally reached top 10.”

Beldon credited his teammates for the milestone.

“I’ve kind of adapted to my teammates,” Beldon said. “I think my teammates just all make me play well. Without them, I can’t score. They set me up perfectly.”

Ayden VanDerWeele bumped the lead up to 3-0 with 3:25 left. Yahir Fajardo headed a Beldon corner kick that Gerstorff deflected in front of the net. It bounced in the air, and Ayden VanDerWeele headed it in.

Burns’ goal came off a Beldon touch pass assist. He maneuvered around charging defender Trevor Kline and fired a shot to the back left corner.

It capped a 3:55 span in which Argos scored three goals. 

“Argos is an extremely talented team, very good top to bottom with their touch and tech as far as passing and movement,” Wolfe said. “So our whole emphasis this week, we ended up losing two starters due to injury, so we had guys next-man-up, and we just told them communication, positional discipline and making sure that we are siding out, so just try to keep everything away from the goal. I thought we did that pretty well against a very, very good team.”

Beldon’s second assist came on Binfet’s goal with 11:37 left. 

Umbaugh stabbed his foot down and lifted a shot over Gerstorff and into the back of the net with 9:53 left to complete the scoring.

“They tried to take the center away from us, and it took us a long time to recognize that,” coach VanDerWeele said. “It took a couple of really good plays by Kenyan Beldon to break us free. Then we relaxed, and then we started getting the ball on a side, and then things got easier for us. But we didn’t play smart for awhile. We played right into what they were trying to do defensively, and it … worked for them because we were playing right into it.”