LEWISTON — If Cony could have picked any time of the year to run into Lewiston, Tuesday’s scheduled contest at Don Roux field would not have been anywhere near the top of the list.
The Blue Devils, off to a slower-than-expected 1-2 start and badly in need of a confidence-boosting win after a tough one-goal loss to Brunswick, showed no mercy as the Rams tried to hang on in the fading sunlight.
Ali Hersi scored once and set up a couple of gorgeous give-and-gos for Showbow Saban, and Ibrahim Achekh added two more of his own as Lewiston dominated Cony in a 6-1 KVAC boys’ soccer victory.
“This like a comeback, you know,” Hersi said. “When you get a big loss like that, when you had a big game and you could have won, and you come back and have a game like this, it builds momentum.”
“In my mind, that team has as good a chance of any to come out of the East,” Cony coach Sean Davis said. “Ali Hersi is probably the best player in the conference, and that’s a very good team we played out there tonight.”
The Blue Devils launched 25 shots toward Cony’s cage — in the first half — to the Rams’ none. But Lewiston left itself in a precarious situation, and nearly went into the break still even at zeroes with Cony.
Lewiston finally broke through on Saban’s first strike, a blast from in tight at a sharp angle on the left side after Hersi fed him the ball up the wing.
“We were snakebit as far as scoring (in the first half),” Lewiston coach Mike McGraw said. “You just have to keep shooting. We were trying too hard and we were missing the net. In the second half, we put a lot more combinations together.”
And the Devils started doing that early. In the sixth minute of the second frame, Saban again finished on a Hersi pass, this time on a give-and-go right up the gut. Saban finished with a low shot to the left post.
“The message was, in the first half we were just bombing the ball,” Hersi said. “In the second half, we settled down and started passing. We’ve been together for three years doing this now. He makes his runs and I give it right to him. There were a lot of gaps and it was easier for me to pass him the ball.”
Hersi took the next one himself when McGraw selected him to take a penalty kick, awarded to the Devils when Eric Hall was tripped in the box on the left side.
Dahir Muktar took a feed from Achekh and buried his chance in the 14th minute to put Lewiston on top 4-0, and Achekh’s first, in the 21st minute, gave the home team a 5-0 advantage.
After a goalie change and a miscommunication between him and the defender, Cony got on the board, also in the 21st minute, on a strike from Kyle Stiefkin.
Achekh rounded out the scoring with 5:35 to play on a volley into the cage on a cross from Tyler Hartman.
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