The Greeneville curse is still alive and well in boys soccer as the Greene Devils handed the Elizabethton Cyclones a 2-nil defeat at Citizens Bank Stadium on Tuesday evening. EHS (5-2, 2-1 conference) played a solid brand of defense, not backing down from the high powered defending state champion but could not do enough offensively to give Greeneville a challenge.

“They got to the ball first several times ahead of us,” Cyclones head coach Bill McClay said. “Some of it was, we could have gotten to the ball but we either didn’t anticipate they would be that aggressive going for it or they were faster than we thought. I think this is similar to the D-B game where we would get it, but play it to the opponent. We got the ball in some channels but didn’t do enough with it.”

The Greene Devils got on the scoreboard in the 11th minute on a goal from senior midfielder John Stewart with an assist from A.J. McGill who found Stewart at the top of the scoring box and Stewart fired a low shot past EHS goalkeeper Noah Lambert to his left.

This was a physical match that saw three yellow cards handed out – two to Greeneville and one to EHS – and Greeneville had 15 total penalties called on them. EHS had plenty of free kicks off those penalties but many were in the negative end of the field, too far to reach the goal.

In the first half the best chance the Cyclones had was a free kick from the 22 yard line taken by Jaxton Holly, who did not shoot for the goal but passed to his right where the Devils defenders closed quickly and killed the play.

“We didn’t make the most of our free kicks,” McClay said. “It really wasn’t set up for the play they tried to run.”

In the second half senior Malachi Ashley scored when he took the ball outside the penalty area and drove to his left and the baseline. He fired a high shot over the shoulder of Lambert in the 44th minute to make it 2-nil.

In the match the Cyclones did not manage a shot on goal as Devils keeper Colby Freeman had a clean sheet in this one.

Greeneville 2-0

Greeneville 1 1 – 2

Elizabethton 0 0 – 0

Scoring summary

First Half

G – Stewart (assist McGill) 11:00

Second half

G – Ashley (unassisted) 44:00

Yellow cards G (Stewart 22:00, Edmunds 40:00), E (McKinney 40:00)