Nov. 9^th, 2003: Champions!! Hawks 4 – Sporting FC– 0
Well, it was a finish to the wire as anticipated! The Hawks have the Mavericks to thank for opening the door this last Sunday by beating the Emerald Knights. Coupled with an Aegean Hawks win, this circumstance was enough to propel our team back into the Premier division for the Spring season - a feat that no team relegated from the Premier has accomplished in the last 10 WISL seasons. The race is 9 games long and all opponents must be played before all the chips are called...at the end of the day, the Aegean Hawks are deserved champions of the Fall 2003 WISL Sunday First Division. We will do our best to represent the division well. Kudos to Mavericks and Emerald for their talent and competition. Hopefully we can meet in the Terrill Cup. Personally, I'm proud of our team's response to last season's relegation. This team has character...a lot of teams would have imploded, but we stuck together and fought for each other. We will definitely have to improve to compete for a top spot in the Premier, but most of the pieces are in place. Regarding the game against Sporting FC, it was almost an afterthought since Sporting showed up with only 9 players. It was difficult to take the game seriously, and the score reflects that. First goal was a nice chip over the defense by Jon Knight to Richard Shaheen, who crossed it to Doug Henry low and hard. A slick one-time shot from ~16 yards out curled to the outside post for a 1-0 margin. Second goal was generated off a Jon Knight cross far field to the chest of Alan Golden in the penalty area. A streaking Mike Williams was able to catch the nice pass across the goal mouth for the tap-in, Hawks up 2- 0. Third goal was a tap in off a similar situation by Yuri Sudhakar from Rich Nyren. The final goal was an "any-leaguer"...Zeus Martin turned and ripped a ridiculous shot from ~28 yards that kept rising and almost tore the nets off the post in the upper left. Sporting FC did extremely well to keep the score at 4- 0 considering the circumstances. Ahh yes - I must mention that Panikos missed a PK that he stole from Yuri. Terrill Cup starts next week and Hawks will be ready. --

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