The Barton Community College men's soccer team put up a pair of first half goals hanging on for a 3-1 victory Wednesday evening over Dodge City Community College. The Cougars improve to 6-2 in conference play and 11-2 on the season while dropping the Conquistadors to 2-5-1 in the West and 4-8-2 on the year. Having already clinched the second seed and a first round home Region VI playoff game improving to 9-2 in the region, Barton will wrap up the regular season this Saturday hosting Northwest Kansas Technical College in a 3:00 p.m. kick.
The Cougars took the lead early in the contest as Lucas Alves and Vinicius Monteiro executed a perfect give-n-go play. Getting Alves the ball at the midfield, Monteiro sliced through the Conquistador defense meeting up with a perfectly placed through ball. With Conq goalkeeper Eric Edge charging hard out to the top of the eighteen, Monteiro won the merge sending the ball under the sliding edge to center net for his second goal of the year as just 11:54 had ticked off the clock.
Alves played distributor again for the eventual game winner sending a beauty of a forward pass to Mario Ramirez breaking through the defense. Having scored his first collegiate goal against the Conqs in the team's earlier meeting, Ramirez would collect his sixth of the year blasting a left footed shot to far post with 10:31 left in the half.
Moments later Alves and Ramirez would bring Jose Escobedo into the mix attacking the Dodge City defensive zone ending as Escobedo's athletic header was thwarted by Edge. On the ensuing counter attack the Conqs sent one of their five shots at goal but Bruce Turner deflected the point blank shot before Benjamin Zamora's heads up play covering the back post kept the ball from reaching the net.
Dodge City made the remaining 29:30 of the game interesting as a resurgent Conq team cut the deficit to one on Jaime Scott's goal from Isaac Palma cutting the Barton lead in half.
The score would remain the same until the closing moments as the Cougars perfectly executed a counter attack late in the game. Getting the ball into the midfield, Sergio Ribeiro fed Monteiro on the left wing who alertly sent a cross far side meeting Ramirez with the one-touch for the net shaker with just fifteen seconds left in the game. For Ramirez that was his third goal in two games against Dodge City having scored and distributed a goal back in the September 14 meeting in Great Bend while Monteiro recorded his team leading sixth assist of the year.