BRISTOLVILLE — Grand Valley wanted it.
After losing to Bristol earlier this year, the Mustangs were not going to allow that to happen again.
Grand Valley controlled the pace for much of the game and made shots at key times to beat the Panthers, 3-0.
The Mustangs have suffered some losses this season, two of which were back-to-back losses to league rivals Badger and Bristol in early September.
In the four games since those losses, Grand Valley High School has won by a combined margin of 14-1.
Grand Valley High School coach Rick Huffman is hoping these losses will be a turning point for his team.
Beating a Bristol team that dominated them for 40 minutes in the opening game is a good start to that.
“In the game against Badger, even though we lost, I felt like we played a good game. As a high school team, we’ve never beaten them, so they look up to us, they feel intimidated, and they don’t perform to their potential.” “That hurt,” Huffman said. “Then I picked myself up after that and now I’m at home against Bristol. … I got pushed around and was down 4-0, but I fought back in the second set to make it 4-3 and run out the clock. I put them in a bind.”
“We like to get punched. We like to get punched in the mouth, figuratively, and then we start playing. If we can keep that up for 80 minutes, things will be different. They were fired up today. They knew they lost a point to Bristol last time. They knew and they wanted to come. … We changed our formation, we made some changes.”
The adjustment worked well.
Senior Dax Pong scored two goals for the Mustangs and junior Anthony Eason scored the third goal for Grand Valley to close out the game.
With the win, Grand Valley improves to 7-3 on the season. Bristol falls to 7-4.
“I came to play today.” “We’re just trying to get the game under control,” Panthers coach Corey Schresenghost said. “A lot has happened since we played them, but they came to play. They were ready, but we weren’t ready today. I talked to the guys beforehand and we weren’t ready to play. But we’ll be ready again tomorrow. We have homecoming on Friday against Heartland Christian, and then it’s just a matter of finishing the rest of the season strong.”
The Mustangs will host rival Pymatanning Valley on Tuesday.
As the postseason approaches, Grand Valley High School is focused on playing the full 80 minutes, and the first step is winning big games.
“We just need to get the 80 minutes together somehow and do what we need to do. That’s our plan.” Huffman said. “Today was a good starting point for us to get emotionally and mentally prepared and understand the big game and what it means to win big games. I couldn’t be more proud of the guys today. Really proud. They did a really great job.”