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After Fierce Weekend Competition, Patriots Return To Wheeling Island, Top Buccaneers

By NICK HENTHORN 3 min read

WHEELING - It was a homecoming of sorts for the Wheeling Park Patriots on Tuesday, coming into Wheeling Island Stadium after a two-game excursion to the JRK Memorial Classic at Pine-Richland to open the season.

Returning to Wheeling, the Patriots needed one half of play to put away the Buckhannon-Upshur Buccaneers 10-0, the last goal needed to trigger the halftime mercy rule coming in the 39th minute by JT Pockl.

"This was a regional game," Park head coach Mario Julian said. "We take every opponent seriously, that's something we're focusing on. You want to go in, you want to play your game and make the plays happen like you practice them. We were able to do that."

Tresz McLeod and Wilson Hanna each earned hat-tricks against the Buccaneers, Aiden McCroskey scored twice, while Pockl and Rynder McLeod each scored once. Park was on the attack virtually the entire game, and the Patriot back line kept Buckhannon-Upshur from ever threatening to score.

It was a much different experience for the Patriots (2-1) than what they had to contend with this past Friday and Saturday, where Wheeling Park took part in a 12-team tournament, facing North Allegheny and Seneca Valley, beating the former 2-1 while falling to the latter 3-2.

"We entered the tournament because, one, Pittsburgh is close to Wheeling," Julian said. "And because the competition was something that, when you have players like Tresz and Wilson and Ike Aderholt and a great goalie like Gavin [Border] and so many more players, we felt like we could play at that high level.

"It was a great opportunity to play against North Allegheny, the largest school in Pittsburgh, and come away with the win. Very next day we played Seneca Valley, the second or third biggest school in Pittsburgh, and we didn't get the win, we were tied 2-2 and lost in the last 17 minutes of regulation when they scored."

The JRK Memorial Classic at Pine-Richland included prolific programs from the Pittsburgh area like Winchester Thurston, Moon, Central Catholic and hosting Pine-Richland, and had the Patriots at the top of their game right from the first kickoff of the season.

"Just a real high level of competition. We've got some really good teams throughout the state of West Virginia, so it was nice to go against some top teams from another state and see how we'd fare. We did really well."

After a weekend of fierce competition, Julian liked what he saw from the Patriots Tuesday. Park will look to not miss a step going into another challenging game, hosting Morgantown on Sept. 3.

"We had a really tough weekend against some really good opponents in Pittsburgh," Julian said. "Came away feeling good about our game, but we had to clean some things up. We worked on passing the other day, and I thought our passing was good today. We worked on our unselfishness, I thought our unselfishness was good. Other guys got goals, got assists. All-in-all, I liked how we looked, and we need to keep practicing and getting better everyday."

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