Jay Daubenberger
Liberal, Kansas – Seward County and Garden City continued their previous battle from earlier in the season after drawing with the Broncbusters 0-0 on the road, the Saints were able to send them back to the stables as Felipe Cooper Flores put SCCC on the board with a late penalty kick to secure a 1-0 win over their Jayhawk rivals.
Both sides were deadlocked through the first 85:00 minutes of action as the Saints and Broncbusters both tried to find ways to get on the board in the opening minutes. Seward County poured on a flurry of shot attempts against Garden City with Leonardo Leitao and Renan Ferreira each taking an opportunity to score but came up a bit short on both. Pedro Mendonca Santos made a shifty move downfield to find open space to go one on one against the opposing goalkeeper and launched in a shot that was just to short to get past the keeper as they kept the score locked up at 0-0. Miguel Kwiatkowski stepped up as the starting goalkeeper for the Saints against the Broncbusters and lived up to expectations with multiple saves to hold off Garden City to create a wall that his opponents could not get past. Despite a long hard-fought matchup between two rivals in the Jayhawk Conference, the game came down to the final five minutes of action as Seward County was fouled inside of the box to give the Saints a PK attempt where Cooper Flores rose to the occasion and knocked in the game winning goal for a 1-0 lead and eventually win over Garden City.
Seward County now improves to 6-4-4 overall on the 2024 season with a conference record of 2-3-4. The Saints will have the rest of the week off to prepare for another big rivalry in the Jayhawk conference as they head to Dodge City on October 16th to face the Conquistadors in a 6:00 PM kickoff.