By Bob Hamar
bob.hamar@theindependent.com

Central Catholic was hoping to get the season off to a good start against Columbus Lakeview on Thursday at Fonner Park, but instead the Vikings scored four first-half goals and went on to a 5-0 victory over the Crusaders.

"As coaches we really expected to win this game," Witmer said. "It's disappointing that it was 5-0. We just have to improve as a team."

Witmer said things just didn't go in GICC's favor early in the game.

"We had two good opportunities in the first 10 minutes to score," Witmer said. "We just didn't capitalize. We could have changed momentum right there if we would have capitalized. We had numbers on them.

"Lakeview kind of picked it up a little bit. They made some good passes and we had some defensive breakdowns in the first half. That's what hurt us right there."

The Crusaders made some changes at halftime that seemed to help, but they were never able to get that first goal of the season.

"The second half we changed some of our players around," Witmer said. "We got four guys at midfield and then toward the end of the game we put another guy from the defense up front to try and get some more scoring opportunities.

"At that point we started to control the field of play a little better and had some better opportunities."

The Crusaders played about 18 players in the game as the coaches look for the right combinations.

"We had different players at different positions during practices," Witmer said. "Toward the end of the game we started putting some players in to see what they could."

The Crusaders will try to get on track when they play at Holdrege on Tuesday.

"Hopefully we can bounce back," Witmer said. "They're a good group of kids. I'm sure they'll bounce back and play great.

"We have to look at our defensive strategy and our midfield strategy and come up with something different. Every team is different year to year. You find out the first game."

Now the Crusaders will have just a couple of practices to get ready for the game against Holdrege."

"We have to work on defense in practices," Witmer said. "We have to work on communication. We come back and play at Holdrege on Tuesday. Hopefully we'll learn from our mistakes and move on."