Marshals down Murray 6-5 in district game

Marshall County senior, Parker Jennings, marking Murray’s Abongo Adongo in Thursday’s district game.

A much improved Murray High team playing their first game of the season at Marshall County Thursday was a typical competitive 2nd District contest with a total of 37 shots in the game, 18 by the Marshals and 19 from the Tigers but with no cards issued in the game in the Marshals 6-5 win.

Junior Tyler Belcher will take care of the goalkeeping duties this season for the Marshals.

Murray scored the first of the 11 goals in the game, coming off the foot of Kevin Koelsch that the Marshals tied on a goal by Quaid Watwood. Murray scored the next two goals to take a 3-1 lead from senior Abongo Adongo and on a penalty kick in the box by Zak Mathis.

Daniel Gardner scored off a corner kick from Jacob Cramer to cut the Murray lead to 3-2 and with 44 seconds remaining in the first half, Austin Stockdale tied the game 3-3. Stockdale went on to score the next two goals unassisted to start the second half to put the Marshals up 5-3.

Murray came right back, tying the game once more with two goals from Nick Bokeno and Andongo. The final and winning goal for the Marshals came with 6:26 to go off a low-flying corner kick by Seth Stader that bent right into the goal.

“I want to give a lot of credit to Murray, they’re just starting out like we are and the game reflected that from both teams”, Head Coach Donnie Heath said. “Like we said before the game…it’s Murray-Marshall…and we have two teams that know each other very well and two teams that like to play a similar style, like to get up down and the defense might have taken a hit for that.

Heath added he didn’t like the five but really like the six on the scoreboard saying, “We’re very excited that our boys found a way to get it done and I think that speaks to the character of the team.”

The Marshals will play three important district games next week starting Monday at Mayfield, then to Graves County on Tuesday and Calloway County at home on Thursday.

Jacob Kramer working the ball away from Murray mid-fielder Ben Schutte.