- December 20, 2024
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I spent two hours bouncing between four games at Father Lopez.
BY MATT MENCARINI | STAFF WRITER
It’s about 160 steps from Father Lopez’s soccer field to the gym.
I know this because I walked it several times Tuesday night, as over the course of two hours I bounced between four different games.
6:15 p.m. With the Green Wave girls soccer team trailing Flagler Palm Coast 3-2, Jordan Hopkins scores a game-tying goal. Meanwhile, the boys team is warming up in the darkness on a nearby practice field.
In the next four minutes, FPC scores two goals, pushing the lead to 5-3 with about 15:30 left in the girls’ game.
6:44 p.m. New Smyrna Beach takes a timeout early in the third quarter of the girls basketball game after Father Lopez’s Shannon Cranshaw scores the first six points of the second half. It’s a 51-21 lead for the Green Wave.
6:54 p.m. Cranshaw brings the ball up court, calls out the defensive scheme, a box-and-one, and hits a three-pointer. She’s quietly dominating the game.
7:34 p.m. After the girls basketball team handles NSB, 76-43, I’m back at the soccer field for the boys game. On the way, I see two future Father Lopez athletes outside the gym playing a game I’d describe as a hybrid of soccer and dodgeball. More on them later.
7:38 p.m. About 90 steps into my walk back to the gym for the boys basketball game, I hear cheering from the soccer field. Father Lopez nets its second goal.
I pass the boys playing outside the gym. It looks like one of them kicked the soccer ball over a fence. They’re working out a way to get it back with a long stick. I’m skeptical.
7:40 p.m. The Green Wave leads Creekside 14-5, with less than one minute remaining in the first quarter. Mailik Maitland heads to the locker room with what looks like a hand injury.
7:51 p.m. Maitland is back in the game. He sidesteps a defender on a breakaway and scores. His hand looks like it’s doing just fine.
7:58 p.m. At halftime, with the Green Wave up 31-10, I head back to my car with more notes than I know what to do with and a deadline to meet.
It looks like I was wrong, though. The youngsters got their soccer ball and are back at it. Make that five games.
