INDIANAPOLIS
Tournament time often sees teams starting slow or playing tentatively.
Save for a very brief moment of nerves, it was business as usual for the Franklin boys soccer team on Monday evening.
Behind the scoring of senior Griffin Atkison and junior Dylan Harris, each of whom scored twice, gave the Grizzly Cubs a 4-0 shutout win over Franklin Central in the opening round of the Class 3A Roncalli Sectional.
Franklin (12-1-3) now faces a familiar semifinal foe in county and Mid-State Conference rival Whiteland on Wednesday afternoon.
“I thought we were a little jittery early, but then we got going, and we kept going on them,” Franklin coach Tony Harris said. “A pretty good start.”
Atkison scored twice in the first half within six minutes of each other.
His first goal, at the 28th minute, was a header that beat Franklin Central goalie Paul Hippleheuser, who previously had made three saves on the Cubs. The second, at the 34-minute mark, came on a breakaway when he beat two Flashes defenders and sent a shot through Hippleheuser’s legs.
Atkison now has 25 goals for the year.
“Griffin got us going,” Harris said. “He makes us run; everybody knows it. It’s no secret, but we’ve got guys that help him and do a lot of things.”
In the second half, the Cubs continued to play as if their season depended on it, and with good reason; just last week, the Cubs blew a 2-0 lead to New Palestine and the Dragons came back to tie the game.
“We’ve had a couple of games where we had a 2-0 lead and then letting off and it bit us,” Harris said. “That was the message at halftime — we can’t have that. We had to keep going, and I thought our guys did a really nice job and staying in the moment.”
Following Atkison’s first-half heroics, Dylan Harris, the coach’s son, provided a pair of tallies in the second half to establish further breathing room for Franklin.
In the 51st minute, Harris headed in the ball on an arc that Hippleheuser had no chance at. Three minutes later, Harris hit his second of the game and sixth of the season. Atkison assisted on both goals.
After the fourth goal, Tony Harris made substitutions, but Franklin still kept up the pressure — both to preserve the shutout and to make a statement that the Grizzly Cubs were going to be a tough opponent.
Two enjoyable footnotes for Franklin were that the win continued an 11-game unbeaten streak and marked the fifth clean sheet of the year for goalie Adam Ott.
“Adam has really come on,” Harris said. “He’s such a tough kid, smart and a great teammate. He does all the little things right and makes some spectacular plays.”
Despite beating Whiteland earlier this season 3-1, Harris knows it’s going to be a much more improved Warrior squad the Cubs will be tangling with.
“We’ve had some really good matches and played some really good teams, and we have a group of guys that work hard,” Harris said. “We’re going to have to go to work (Tuesday) and get ready for Whiteland.”
