MARQUETTE — A late first-half goal from junior Drew Wyble propelled the Marquette Senior High School varsity boys soccer team to a 3-0 victory over the Escanaba-Bayside club team at the Kaufman Sports Complex on Monday evening.

The Redmen have only one loss as the season moves forward.

MSHS head coach Dan Menze said despite a strong possession game, his teams overall game plan didn’t necessarily work, forcing his team to adjust.

“We possessed the ball fairly well and moved the ball around but what we were trying to do wasn’t working and we didn’t make the necessary changes to apply more pressure and get more shots,” he said. “Credit a lot to Escanaba-Bayside because they were really running at us, pressuring the ball hard and making it difficult to string together passes, which disrupted our game going forward.

“It was just a matter of calming down and making the easy plays. We were trying to force it a little too much and that’s a learning point for them.”

Menze added that getting past the opponents strong goalkeeping was a challenge at times.

“We’ve just got to keep getting shots because there’s rebounds that come out and we were able to pounce on those every once in a while. We want to get the ball deep, but when we got the ball deep, we kept doing the same thing over and over and when we finally switched it, we started to get more success and more shots on goal. I thought we could have put in a couple more but I’m happy with the result.”

Marquette controlled the play for most of the first half and despite several chances, including one off the crossbar, were unable to find the back of the net.

With 2:18 to play in the first half, Wyble took a hard shot from the left side. The line drive ball shot off the goalkeeper’s hands and into the back of the net to make it 1-0 at halftime.

22 minutes into the second half, junior Trevor Salmon put the Redmen up 2-0, kicking the ball from the middle of the field after an initial MSHS shot that was blocked by the Bayside defense.

Sophomore Connor Johnson added an insurance goal with 8:39 to play, on a pass from senior Raffy Millado who ran up the left side and made a light cross pass over to Johnson who put it home, all but securing the victory.

Senior Kyle Michelson played in net for the Redmen in the first half, while sophomore Liam Jeevar took over goalkeeping duties in the second half.

Marquette travels to Iron Mountain on Wednesday for a 7 p.m. contest.

Email Ryan Spitza at sports@miningjournal.net.