Last Saturday, the Aberdeen Central boys’ soccer program let an early mistake compound into a 3-goal deficit.

Tuesday, it did the opposite, shaking off an early 1-goal deficit to claim a 9-2 win over Mitchell in the penultimate contest of the season at the Gene Brownell Activities Complex.

Golden Eagle senior defenseman and captain Jordan Grieban acknowledged the sting of that earlier contest, a 4-1 road loss to Yankton, but said it just fueled the desire to come back stronger.

“We wanted to make a statement to everyone that, hey, don’t quiet down on us,” Grieben said. “We’re still good. We came out a little slow, but once we got the distractions out of our head, we got after it.”

The early portions of Tuesday’s contest, however, were not overtly promising, as Mitchell marched down the field and scored in the second minute of action.

“Part of the challenge every time when we have Senior Night is just that extra distraction that gets us out of rhythm right away,” said Central coach Lance Mohr. “So what happens is we come out and we’re not quite ready to go. That’s what you saw the first 5 to 10 minutes. I was waiting for us to kind of get going and eventually we did. It helped to get that first goal just to get that monkey off our back.”

Manuel Munoz opened the Golden Eagle floodgates with the first of his three goals with just under 25 minutes to play in the first half. The goal capped a nice give-and-go sequence all the way down the field, ending with a Tyson Hassebrook feed to Munoz, who beat Mitchell goalkeeper Evan Mitchell to the left side of the net.

It was the epitome of what Mohr said he wanted to see from his team.

“We were able to create the right kind of chances in the right kind of spaces,” Mohr said. “I wasn’t looking for us to just hit the ball down the field and be direct and force it, force it, force it. I wanted us to use some combination play and combine with each other to get through. You saw a lot of that, especially in the second half. We really got together as far as moving the ball and that was much, much better than over the weekend.”

For Munoz, that goal was redemption of sorts.

“That first goal, it was my fault so I felt so bad,” Munoz said. “But after we scored one goal, I felt better. After that goal, the whole team changed its mentality. The whole team stayed focused.”

And it did.

Exactly three minutes after Munoz’ goal. Hassebrook netted the first of his two goals. Munoz scored again with about 18 minutes to go, then fed a wide open Hassebrook in front of the net with 14:28 to play. 

Tyler Bain ended the first half scoring.

For Grieben, watching the offense tick scores up on the board, though nice to see, isn’t license to lose focus.

“When they’re rolling, our defense knows we have to keep rolling,” Grieben said. “Just because our offense is rolling goals in doesn’t mean we can slack one bit. Every time the ball comes in our half, we’re super engaged.”

Bain came out of the halftime break and bent in a corner kick to open the second half of action. Philip Abel, Munoz and Lawson Hansen added goals of their own in that half.

Mitchell got goals from Caden Olegario in the first half and Gavin Zilla in the second. Zilla’s goal came on a set piece free kick.

And if putting the Yankton loss behind them was the initial goal, there are still other goals on the immediate horizon for the Golden Eagles.

“We wanted to erase Yankton from our head,” Mohr said, “so we could focus on attacking this game and going into the next one and ultimately getting ready for a week from today when we have a big tournament game. That’s really what we’re working toward. Thursday is another opportunity for us to get better and get more confidence so we could head into next Tuesday ready to go.”

Central will host Pierre Thursday evening to round out the regular season before turning its attention to postseason play next week.