Greene Central's Nathan Drake tries to make a move as South Lenoir's Todd Smith defends in Monday's games. Photo by Laieke Abebe / Neuse News

Greene Central broke open a halftime tie with a 10-3 victory over South Lenoir Monday.

The Rams (7-2, 1-1 ECC) scored the first two goals courtesy of freshman midfielder Ariel Nunez midway through the first half. However, the Blue Devils (5-3, 2-1) took advantage of some defensive errors from the Rams as Steven Rodriguez and Luis Rodriguez scored in quick succession, the latter goal coming with 10 seconds left in the first half.

Despite the Blue Devils being blue to find their way back into the game, the Rams answered right away in the second half.

Junior forward Alan Rubio continued his goal-scoring onslaught to start the second half and the Rams wouldn’t relinquish their lead.

Senior midfielder Ulises Mora scored two goals and had two assists in the second half. Goals from Rubio and freshman defender Chris Rivera made it 7-2 with 13 minutes left. South Lenoir would answer with another goal from Steven Rodriguez, but the damage was already done.

“We want to score a lot of goals and get everyone involved,” Mora said after the game. “The second goal I scored felt really good and my teammates put me in the right position to score.”

Sophomore midfielder Nathan Drake got in on the act by scoring a hat trick in the last four minutes of the game. His penalty kick late in the second half provided the final scoring. Despite the tough result, Blue Devils head coach David Whaley saw a lot of encouraging things from his team.

“We have a tendency to start slow,” Rams head coach Matt Gnau said. “I think we played our game in the second half, but we took some ill advised shots and made some bad passes early in the match. Once we started to possess the ball and switch the field of play, we were able to do some good things.”

Blue Devils head coach David Whaley saw a lot of encouraging things from his team.

“(Greene Central) has a deep team,” he said. “They came out refocused in the second half and I wasn’t happy with how we finished this game. The final score doesn’t depict how hard my kids played tonight. I have a really young team, so they’re going to learn from this and bounce back.”

South Lenoir and Greene Central are back in action on Wednesday. The Blue Devils will host Ayden-Grifton while the Rams travel to take on Kinston.