Michel’s 23rd goal for Riverside brings down East Chapel Hill
Riverside may play some post-season soccer after all.
Helped by a red card against East Chapel Hill in the game’s 56th minute, Riverside got the only goal in Friday’s match at Wildcat Stadium when Peterson Michel banged in shot from 20 yards out with 7:33 left on the clock. That lifted Riverside to its 1-0 victory over East Chapel Hill and into a tie for fourth place in the 4A PAC-6.
Conference champion Cardinal Gibbons (15-2-1, 11-1-0 PAC), runnerup East Chapel Hill (13-4-3, 9-3-0) and Jordan (13-6-0, 8-4-0) already had sewed up the league’s top three playoff spots.
With Friday’s win in its last game of the regular season, Riverside (8-7-3, 6-6-0) moved from out of contention and into a tie for fourth place in the PAC-6 with Northern Durham (12-9-0, 6-6-0).
Northern and Riverside might have to play an extra game to decide fourth place, or the N.C. High School Athletics Association might simply award a wildcard spot to Northern, based on its better overall winning percentage, East coach Austin Collins said.
But Riverside coach Jose Santibanez felt more positive about Riverside’s post-season chances.
“This was a huge win,” Santibanez said. “This means getting into the playoffs.”
Michel said the Pirates “worked so hard, because we wanted to make the playoffs.”
By the numbers
23: goals this year for Michel, who leads the PAC-6 in goals scored.
9: more shots for Riverside (20) than for East (11). Michel took almost as many shots (10) as the entire East Chapel Hill team.
4: wins for Riverside in its last 6 games.
2: wins for East Chapel Hill in its last five games.
2: red cards for East Chapel Hill in two games. East’s Porter Alexander was ejected with 24:48 left in the game for “using his elbow as weapon,” the head official told Collins. “He’s the only one in the stadium that saw it that way,” Collins said.
0: goals for East Chapel Hill for the second game in a row, having lost to Cardinal Gibbons 3-0 earlier in the week.
Three who mattered
Peterson Michel: The tall senior arrival this year from Haiti has changed everything for Riverside, which is enjoying its first winning season since 2009. “What Riverside has needed for a long time is a true striker, and Peterson is a great striker.”
Tyler Westerhoff: Usually a backup to Lee Folger, the East Chapel Hill senior started in goal and stopped 7 of Riverside’s 8 shots on-goal, including 4 excellent strikes by Michel.
Matt Schutz: Riverside’s junior goalie was challenged more than once but stopped all five of East Chapel Hill’s shots on-goal and smothered at least four other 1v1 chances that the Wildcats otherwise might have converted.
They said it
Riverside coach Jose Santibanez: “This was a ‘must’ win. We started the season really slow, and we tied some teams that in my opinion we shouldn’t have tied, and we put ourselves behind the eight ball in terms of making the playoffs. I told the boys we needed to win our last two games to get in, and we beat Person earlier this week and then we knocked off East.”
East Chapel Hill coach Austin Collins: “This is my seventh year coaching at East Chapel Hill and these are the only two red cards we’ve ever gotten – two in two games.”
This story was originally published October 30, 2015 at 9:45 PM with the headline "Michel’s 23rd goal for Riverside brings down East Chapel Hill."