Chapel Hill survives tough challenge from Pirates

CHAPEL HILL A casual observer noting the six yellow cards and 33 total fouls called in Friday’s N.C. High School East 3A playoff game between No. 6 seed Chapel Hill and visiting No. 11 seed Wendell Corinth Holders might easily infer it was a violent affair.

It was more like a vocal affair.

Chapel Hill won 2-1, much to the displeasure of a small, but loud, group of about 50 Corinth Holder fans.

The play was “chippy,” Chapel Hill co-captain Blake Johnson said, but a large number of the fouls were for talking back to the officials, taunting or, in some cases, engaging with the crowd.

“In the playoffs, every game is going to be like that, and it’s going to get worse every game we advance,” Johnson said. “But we were up to the challenge. We kept our heads and didn’t get too many fouls.”

At game’s end, the officials were escorted by a police officer past the jeering fans from Corinth Holder, a couple of whom followed the officiating crew to the gate and continued to voice their unhappiness.

Chapel Hill took 16 shots, seven on-goal, while Corinth Holders took 12, five on-goal.

“It was heck of a ball game – a very exciting game if you weren’t the losing coach,” Corinth Holders coach Brent Walston said.

Chapel Hill (16-6-1) got a 1-0 lead off a corner kick just 7 minutes into the second-round game. Ryab Shaifei started the set piece with a kick lofted to the center of the penalty area, where Nick Hebert flicked a header forward to Will Berner, who hit a side-winding, waist-high shot past freshman keeper Ryan Mills.

Predictably, the game was decided on a penalty kick.

With the game tied at 1-1 after a goal in the 44th minute by Pirates offensive midfielder Derek Kaple, Chapel Hill (17-2-3) drew a penalty kick as Hebert was tripped in the box. Chapel Hill’s Sam Linker planted the PK low and to his right to provide the game-winner with 27 minutes, 4 seconds left to play.

Corinth Holders was hurt by getting four of its five yellow cards in the game’s final 30 minutes. The Pirates committed 19 fouls to Chapel Hill’s 14, and both sides drew additional, repeated warnings from the center official.

“We were pleased that we tied it up with some much time left, and we had several good opportunities in our offensive third third in the second half,” Walston said. “We just lost our composure a little bit.”

Corinth Holders came tantalizingly close to getting the equalizer in the game’s last minutes. The Pirates’ best opportunity came in the 64th minute after Adam Landeros heeled a pass at midfield over to Pedro Segundo at the top of the penalty arc; Segundo fed the pass back to a streaking Landeros who blasted a shot from inside 10 yards off the crossbar.

Landeros had helped score the Pirates’ only goal – hitting a strong shot that Chapel Hill goalkeeper Lu Lue punched away before Kaple put away the rebound from just off the far post.

“As the game went later and later, it was just a matter of who had the legs to finish,” Johnson said.

Reaching the third round of the playoffs for a seventh straight year, Chapel Hill will play either at eastern No. 3 Lee County or host No. 14 Southern Nash in the next round.

This story was originally published November 6, 2015 at 11:58 PM with the headline "Chapel Hill survives tough challenge from Pirates."