East Rutherford's offense improves in win over West Caldwell

LENOIR-In a battle between a team rebuilding against a team trying to find its offensive identity, West Caldwell’s soccer team fell to East Rutherford 2-1 on Monday night. After a very rough start to the year, West Caldwell (0-9, 0-2 Western Piedmont Conference) took their third straight one goal defeat. Marcus Short found the back of the net twice for the Cavaliers, to give them their largest offensive output since their first game of the season over a month ago. Kenneth Nunez scored for the Warriors on a free kick, while Phillip Horton had seven saves. “Much more fluid movement across the field for us tonight, we had better chances, better possession, just a good effort from our guys tonight,” East Rutherford (3-3-2, 1-1 WPC) coach Neil VanDyke said. “Both of them (Short and Henry Strickland) are starting to put it together, that is sort of where we have been all year, trying to figure out how to put the pieces together and they are starting to figure out how we want to put it together and where we want to be. I thought both of them did a great job being coachable tonight and really working through what the team game plan was going to be.” The Cavaliers out shot the Warriors 19-10 including 9-4 on goal. East Rutherford had an 8-0 advantage on corner kicks. “I really wish that we had the effort from after the goal, the whole game, instead of the last seven, eight minutes, if we had had that effort for eighty minutes, I think it would have turned out differently, but this team is a work in progress, it is growing, we knew that was going to be the case from the get go, and I see small things that we are getting better at, and I think we can find some wins, we just need to keep improving,” West Caldwell coach Thomas Clark said. “A lot of ending up with support when we get those opportunities comes down to hustle and want. You know we practice that, we practice crashing the goal, that center forward making the run to the front post, the center mid making the run to the back post if he is coming off the opposite side, right now I really think they need something to get that intensity going and that would help with that because that has been our problem all year, we have some speed on the wings, and we’ll get a through ball and get down there, and then there is nothing for them to do with it. Nunez has to check back a lot to help us control the ball in the middle, so then he is not (available forward to crash the goal).” Short scored early in each half for the Cavaliers as he scored in the 10th minute and the 49th minute. “Just open pockets, teammates played me in, found the runs,” Short stated. On the seven corner kicks that he took, “(we were) trying to make a little bit of chaos, leave a man open on the back side.” {!--StartFragment--}An East Rutherford yellow card in the 75th minute gave Nunez a free kick from the top of the box which he threaded through the wall into the left side of the goal.{!--EndFragment--} “This team is a lot of JV guys from last year, that never played varsity, very few minutes from last year returned, Nunez returned with a lot of minutes and other than that not a lot returned with minutes, and so we are a work in progress and we are getting better every day,” Clark commented. East Rutherford continues their road trips, heading to Draughn on September 15 at 6 p.m., only returning home on September 21 at 6 p.m. against Chase. West Caldwell goes to East Burke on September 16 at 6 p.m. before returning home on September 21 at 6:30 p.m. to face Patton. Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles. [Read Full Story on Thedigitalcourier.com →](https://www.thedigitalcourier.com/archives/east-rutherfords-offense-improves-in-win-over-west-caldwell/article_9a48327f-68fc-581c-bcce-1d4b99837bae.html)