Clovis boys take draw with NMMI

ROSWELL — If the saying is true, that a tie is like kissing your sister, the Clovis boys soccer team broke out the Chapstick and gave sis a smackeroo Thursday night at New Mexico Military Institute.

The Wildcats traveled to Roswell Thursday and traveled back with a 1-1 tie in the books.

That stalemate was not quite what the ’Cats wanted, but it did mark their fourth straight game without a loss, and moved their record to 4-2-1.

“I thought that we didn’t play to our strengths in the midfield, which is maintaining a lot of possession,” Wildcats head coach Greg Trujillo said. “When we maintain possession we try to open teams up. And we didn’t do any of that.”

Thursday’s game was scoreless through the first half. In the opening moments of the second half, the Wildcats looked as though they might finally gain an edge, when senior forward Alberto DeLeon was point-blank in front of the goal with NMMI’s keeper beat. DeLeon’s shot, however, missed high.

“We had a couple of opportunities like that,” Trujillo said.

Soon afterward, in the half’s third and the game’s 43rd minute, NMMI junior forward Daniel Angulo broke the scoreless tie.

“(Clovis senior back) Jose Mendoza tried to fake out the forward and missed the ball,” Trujillo said, “So of course their forward got the ball and put it in.”

The Colts’ 1-0 lead held for 25 more minutes until the 68th.

“We finally connected on a couple passes on the right,” Trujillo said. The ball soon came to senior halfback Cody Little in the middle, who placed the shot perfectly, according to Trujillo, knotting the game at 1-all.

After the score was still tied at the end of regulation, there weren’t many chances for either team in the two overtime periods, just as there hadn’t been many in the first half.

“Defensively we played a really sound game,” Trujillo said. “It was just about not generating scoring opportunities today. We got caught up playing NMMI’s game. ... We weren’t able to connect and put the ball on the gorund and connect on the things we do really well when we play well.”

The tie occurred two days after Clovis edged Lovington 1-0 on Lupe Meza’s goal.

And that followed a three-game Labor Day weekend stretch in the Louie Cernicek Tournament in Los Alamos, during which Clovis went 2-1 — on a 1-0 loss to Los Lunas, a 1-0 win over Alamogordo and a 4-1 victory over Valencia.

Clovis will try to push its unbeaten streak to five when visiting Portales on Tuesday night, 6 p.m. It will be the Wildcats’ sixth away game in a slate of 10 consecutive road games between Aug. 30 and Sept. 21.