STANFORD — The Lincoln County soccer Patriots won handily in their first 45th District game, defeating visiting Garrard County 10-0 Thursday night.

Three different players scored for Lincoln, led by junior Trey Cummins, who notched five goals and added an assist. Senior Austin Wethington finished right behind Cummins with four goals on the night with one assist while sophomore Josh Hatfield had one goal to help the soccer Patriots kick off district play with an emphatic victory over Garrard in a game that was shortened to just one half due to the mercy rule.

“We’ve been talking about being more mentally prepared at the start of the game,” Lincoln coach Lewis Cummins said. “The first few games I don’t think we’ve been as focused. So, we came out focused tonight and scored really quick in the game.”

For anyone clinging to the worn-out cliche about how soccer is boring and that there isn’t enough scoring. To those people, Trey Cummins had this response – he scored just 15 seconds into Thursday’s game.

Garrard County’s players lightly touched the ball off the kickoff to start the game when Lincoln blasted in to gain possession. Wethington was pushing the ball toward goal when he was tripped in the goalie box, and Cummins came on to boot in the penalty kick to give the soccer Patriots all the scoring they would need.

But they would get more. Plenty more.

The soccer Patriots (4-0) kept pounding the ball in on the Lions’ goalkeeper, Matthew Smith, scoring half of their goals in the first 10 minutes of the game. Wethington tallied his first goal less than four minutes in, Cummins was back in goal a minute later and again at the 31:45 mark of the first half then, with 30:06 showing, Wethington scored from the right side of goal for a 5-0 lead.

Wethington made it 6-0 with his third goal of the game at the 26:58 mark.

Hatfield interrupted the Cummins-Wethington scoring tandem when he scored a goal with 22:11 left in the half. Cummins followed with two more goals before Wethington punched in the final goal with 2:09 on the clock.

“We’d been harping on them since last year about being focused,” coach Cummins said. “Last year we were 0-0 at halftime with Garrard and we shouldn’t have been. Since then, we’ve been trying to get them focused to be mentally ready. We even fussed at them in the warmups because they were goofing off a little bit. We were trying to say ‘get mentally ready.’ I guess they did.”

Lincoln goalkeeper Carter Tillett got a few touches on the ball but, for most of the abbreviated game, he was all alone in goal.

“There were no serious threats on him,” said Cummins. “Defense played well with him. Everything was just clicking for us tonight.”
Garrard fell to 1-2 in the loss.