For the Daily Journal
Greenwood’s boys soccer team faced the same dilemma Thursday that most Franklin opponents encounter when they face the Grizzly Cubs and their star forward, Owen Atkison.
Atkison’s a dynamic scorer, but also an effective distributor. He excelled at both Thursday against the Woodmen.
He finished with four goals and an assist, and he also set up two other goals with breakaways and missed shots that deflected to teammates. That helped Franklin (6-6, 5-2) ease to an 8-1 win over the host Woodmen.
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“He’s a little different than most, because if you lock him up, he’s going to start feeding everybody else,” Greenwood coach Dan Weber said of Atkison. “You can’t just lock him down and say you’re going to make the rest of the team beat us, because they will.”
Atkison now has 25 goals and 14 assists on the season.
“I take more pride in my distributing,” he said. “I think it really shows a better part to my game. It says more to get the guy next to me a goal than to get myself a goal.”
He wasted little time doing that Thursday, even if it didn’t result in an assist. Atkison broke ahead of the Greenwood defense 10 seconds into the match. He missed his shot, but it deflected to teammate Garrett Snyder, who put the ball in the net just 14 seconds in.
Just 2:02 later, Atkison set up Owen Mahin for a goal off a corner kick. He then scored Franklin’s next three goals to stake the Grizzly Cubs to a 5-1 halftime lead.
Snyder got another goal off another deflected Atkison attempt with 24:03 to play, and Atkison scored his fourth and final goal on a Snyder assist with 20:50 to play. He sat out the game’s final 10 minutes.
Christos Hronopoulos rounded out Franklin’s scoring with an unassisted goal with seven minutes remaining.
“He’s a part of every play we do,” Franklin coach Tony Harris said of Atkison. “You try to make sure that you can be a little well-rounded, but when you have a kid like him, you can try to get the ball to Garrett or Owen, but he’s going to find a way to be involved.”
Greenwood (3-10-1, 1-6 Mid-State) averted a shutout when senior forward Bastian Sanchez scored among a crowd of defenders with 22:50 to play in the first half. It cut Franklin’s lead to 2-1 at the time, but Atkison started his three-goal tear to end the half just 5:10 later, eliminating any doubt to the match’s outcome.
“We knew they were going to come out aggressive, but their overall speed caught us off guard in the first minute or two of the game,” Weber said of Franklin. “They really don’t have a whole lot of weaknesses.”
The Grizzly Cubs play Saturday at Batesville. Greenwood hosts Greenwood Christian on Monday.
