Warren Central’s Jeremy Lawrence, right, battles for the ball with Florence’s Andrew Thomas during Friday’s 4-1 loss. (Jon GiffinThe Vicksburg Post)

[11/20/04]With just 18 minutes remaining in the game, Warren Central was clinging to a 1-0 lead before the collapse came.

The Vikings fell apart and allowed four goals down the stretch to fall 4-1 to No. 9 Florence on Friday. The loss ends Warren Central’s three-game win streak and drops it to 4-3 on the season. Florence outshot WC 10-3 in the game.

“Really and truly, we all thought we were going to win that ball game,” WC coach Jay Harrison said. “We just didn’t get it done.”

Harrison brought his players into the locker room after the game and spoke with them for 20 minutes about staying focused and improving with each game.

“We gave up four goals, but they’re mistakes we’re going to learn from,” he said. “Each goal had a mistake that went with it that we can fix. We just made four costly mistakes with 18 minutes to go.”

Much of the game was played on Warren Central’s side of the field because of Florence’s aggressive offense. Harrison said his gameplan called for a containment defense which worked up to the end.

“They have a very strong possession game and we have a counter to that, which is get behind the ball and make them play it in the air,” he said. “If they can’t play the ball on the ground to each other, it plays to our advantage.”

Florence (4-2) had numerous opportunities to score in the first half, but couldn’t convert its chances.

The Vikings got on the board with penalty kick with 7:30 remaining in the first half. A Florence player caught Charlie Mullen with a cleat for the penalty. Mullen then rolled the kick into the net for a 1-0 WC lead.

“We took a lot of shots, we just couldn’t get them to fall,” Florence coach Danny Wilder said of the first half. “At the halftime, I told our guys to just keep playing our game, keep playing aggressive and hard soccer and just keep shooting the ball and something was going to fall.”

And the shots fell in rapid succession.

Adam Byrd tied the game with 17:30 left in the second half when WC keeper Craig Brown slipped while trying to block the kick.

Less than a minute later, Andrew Thomas’ score gave Florence the lead, then Steven Williams netted a third goal on a shot over Brown’s head.

Bill Zaremba completed the scoring on a penalty shot with less than a minute left in the game. Zaremba’s kick bounced off the top crossbar, and he punched it in on the rebound.

Harrison said he hopes his young team can learn from its mistakes and improve.

“We’ve taken every game that we’ve played and we’re learning, we’re getting better,” Harrison said. “We played better tonight than we played the past three ball games, and we’re going to play better the next game.”

(G) WC 3, Florence 0

Julie Spence netted a pair of goals to lead the Lady Vikes to a win.

Kari Lieberman added a score, and Kristine Fischenich had an assist for WC.

Warren Central (5-1-1) outshot Florence 11-3 in the game.