SENATOBIA, Miss. — The No. 11 Pearl River men's soccer team spread the scoring around Friday night, with five different Wildcats finding the back of the net in a dominant 5-1 victory over Northwest.
"It's a long and tough trip to make all the way up here," head coach Drew Gallant said. "Northwest parked the bus on us, and their players were really bought in on that. We had to limit their counters and work hard to break them down, and I thought we did a good job with that tonight.
"We knew coming into the year that we were going to need a lot of different goal scorers to make up for the hole Tiago left. It's going to take goals from a lot of different guys for us to make a run at things."
Pearl River (6-3-1 overall; 4-0-1 MACCC) broke through in the 30th minute. Oren Doxey (Bay St. Louis; St. Stanislaus) whipped a ball into the box that bounced around before popping into the air. Camden Hayes (Ocean Springs) crashed in and headed it off the diving keeper's right hand and into the net, 1-0.
The Wildcats doubled their advantage in the 41st minute. Julian van Rijsdam (Badhoevedorp, Netherlands) lofted a cross just over the fingertips of the leaping keeper, and Zach Howard (Ocean Springs) was there to bury it, 2-0.
Northwest (4-6-2; 1-4 MACCC) immediately pulled one back, converting a volley inside the box to cut the deficit to 2-1 going into halftime.
Pearl River quickly reasserted control after the break. In the 60th minute, Doxey headed a cross down into the path of van Rijsdam, who slid a shot across goal and into the left side of the net, 3-1.
The scoring continued late. In the 81st minute, Emil Corfitzen (Copenhagen, Denmark) worked the ball down the left wing and squared a pass into the box for a crashing Drew Rumery (Ocean Springs), who tapped it home for a 4-1 lead.
Corfitzen then added the final touch in the 87th, smashing home a perfect through ball from Jason Marshall (Long Beach) to cap off the 5-1 win.
NEXT UP
The Wildcats return home Tuesday for a 7 p.m. match against Copiah-Lincoln.
TICKETS
Tickets for the 2025 Pearl River soccer season are available now at PRCCAthletics.com/Tickets. Advance-purchase tickets are $8, while gameday tickets are $10.
TUNE IN
The Wildcats will once again livestream all home games for free at PRCCMedia.com. Fans with Roku, Amazon Fire or Apple TV devices can also watch by downloading the "Pearl River CC" channel from their app store.
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