PITTSBORO — Behind the one-two punch of senior captains Omar Gallegos and Roger Rosada, Northwood started its boys’ soccer season on the right foot.
The Chargers dominated Southern Alamance at home, 5-1, on August 21.
Forwards Gallegos and Rosada scored two goals each, keeping Northwood in control of the entire game.
“My two captains, they’re pretty smart, they’re pretty mature, and they did a really good job of making sure that everyone was involved in the play,” Northwood coach Ascary Arias said. “I think they did a really good job.”
Said Gallegos, “We weren’t expecting much, but we came out here to try to do our job and try to do what we’ve been practicing for.”
It didn’t take long for Gallegos to knock in the Chargers’ first goal of the season as he worked around defenders and scored from the right side of the net just over five minutes into the game.
“They gave me the space, so I took it,” Gallegos said.
Gallegos scored his second goal to put the Chargers up 4-0 with just under 10 minutes left to play, yet the scoreboard wasn’t that lopsided in the game’s earlier moments.
Although the Chargers controlled most of the possession and took numerous shots in the first half, Northwood entered halftime only up 1-0.
Arias told his team at halftime it needed to get better touches and take more shots at the front of the goal.
“He’s right because sometimes we take too many touches, not get the ball where we want which pretty much messes up the whole come up,” Gallegos said.
Early in the second half, Rosada began to convert on those scoring opportunities to build on Northwood’s lead.
Just two minutes out of the break, Rosada raced ahead of Southern Alamance defenders for his first goal of the game, and less than three minutes later, he intercepted a pass and broke free for another score to put the Chargers up 3-0.
Rosada said his goals were just a matter of “running” and “pacing,” which is what he and Gallegos did all night on the outside while the team prepared its attacks from the middle.
“Coming in, we knew that we could win this game, so we prepared to move the ball around a little bit, look into the spaces, move the ball a little bit more to the middle as opposed to just going to the flag and kicking it to the box,” Arias said.
Up 4-0 in the game’s final minutes, Northwood allowed just one goal to Southern Alamance, but a penalty kick conversion from junior Aidan Swaine put the finishing touch on the Chargers’ win.
As exemplified by Swaine’s contribution, Gallegos and Rosada weren’t the only Chargers to put their stamp on the game.
Junior striker Kevin Fortin came in as a defensive midfielder and impressed Arias with his productive minutes.
“He did a phenomenal job,” Arias said. “He won maybe nine out of 10 and then was able to find passes forward and stuff like that. Kevin stood out for me as one of the players that I looked at and said, ‘hopefully he’ll be doing good things.’”
With the win, Northwood started the season 1-0 for the second straight year after opening 2023 with a 4-2 victory over Carrboro.
For the new season, Arias said the team’s biggest goal is “growth.”
After two straight losing seasons from 2022-23, Arias doesn’t want his players to worry about the wins as much their development in the fundamentals and IQ of soccer.
On the player level, that starts with Gallegos and Rosada stepping up as the team’s leaders and leading the charge in early morning workouts and holding the younger players accountable.
“We’re trying to get everyone out in the morning running,” Rosada said. “In the afternoon, we’re rarely missing practices. Honestly, it’s way more consistent than last year.”
Despite going 9-11-2 overall and 6-7-1 in conference play last year, the Chargers still made the playoffs and won a playoff game. With an emphasis on the simple, little aspects of the game, Northwood hopes it can take another step in the right direction and let the wins take care of themselves this season.
“Winning games is obviously important,” Arias said. “For me, it’s development, making sure they’re learning the right things and not just learning to win a game. If you do everything right, the fundamentals, skills, finishing, passing, all of that, you should win games.”