One of the Vicksburg Gators’ biggest problems so far this season has been finishing scoring chances. They had more trouble doing it on Saturday, but when you get as many chances as they did it’s not hard to still come up with a win.

Ryan Ferrington and Patrick Parker each scored two goals as Vicksburg routed Natchez Cathedral 5-0. Paul Velazquez also scored a goal and Perry Tolliver had an assist.

“We did some good things today,” VHS coach Jason Bennett said. “We still need to improve, but we’ve got a district game on Tuesday and if we continue to improve we’ll be all right.”

Vicksburg outshot the Green Wave 22-4 and controlled the action for the overwhelming majority of the game. All of Cathedral’s shots were handled easily by VHS keeper Bowen Woodson, and the Wave did not put any sustained pressure on him.

Despite the lopsided advantage in shots on goal, VHS struggled to put the ball in the net. Jesse Morrison made 13 saves for Cathedral, while Vicksburg was called for offsides more than a half dozen times and passed up potential scoring chances on several other occasions.

“Finishing has been a problem for us all year. We had chances in a lot of games to score more goals than we did,” Bennett said.

Still, the Gators did enough to have an easy day.

At the 13-minute mark of the first half, Tolliver gathered in the ball near the left sideline and lofted a cross toward the goal. Ferrington jumped up and headed it past Morrison for the first goal of the game.

“I was at the right place at the right time,” Ferrington said. “It was a good cross, I guess.”

Parker made it 2-0 on a penalty kick — awarded for a foul on Cathedral during a scrum in the box — at the 28-minute mark, and the Gators blew it open late in the second half.

After Parker stretched the lead to 3-0 with his second goal midway through, VHS tacked on two goals late to make it a rout. Ferrington got one by dribbling around Morrison and deking the keeper twice without being touched by a defender, then tapping the ball into the net.

Ferrington also set up the final goal on a direct kick, faking as if he was going to boot it toward the goal but instead purposely whiffed. The misdirection allowed Velazquezt o follow behind him and kick the ball into the net for a 5-0 lead with less than three minutes to play.

“We got in our groove. I guess that was it,” Ferrington said. “We need to play like that every game.”

(B) WC 1, Terry 1

Cody Barfield scored off a corner kick from Sean McRaney with five minutes left in the game as Warren Central earned a tie with Terry on Friday in the Northwest Rankin tournament.

(G) Clinton 4, WC 0

Clinton shut out Warren Central in the girls’ portion of the Northwest Rankin tournament on Friday.