LEWISTON — Lewiston junior forward Abdi Shariff is going to draw a lot of attention to himself if he keeps this up.
Shariff scored a pair of goals in 10 seconds in the first half and added his hat trick goal in the second to help lift Lewiston to a 4-1 win over Brewer in the teams’ KVAC season opener on Saturday.
“I expected him to come through this year, and I expect to do it as a team,” Lewiston coach Mike McGraw said. “He is going to attract a lot of attention, so the other guys are going to have to step up, too.”
Mohamed Abdisalan had the Blue Devils’ other goal, and Abdulkarim Abdulle added three helpers — all on Shariff’s goals.
Oisin Biswas scored for the Witches, who used an offside trap in the second half to try to slow down the devils’ speedy attack.
“We know Lewiston’s a fast team, and they like to swing the ball and pull it back and they like to try to catch teams pinching up and play balls through,” Brewer coach Ben Poland said. “We really stressed that at halftime, not playing into that. Our defenders were being a little more attentive to where they were on the field, and we were able to pull up a little bit more, and we were able to catch them offsides.”
“They had a strategy for that, it worked well,” McGraw said. “More power to them. They did what they had to do to come in here.”
McGraw was more concerned with his own team’s play, despite the three-goal win.
“The timing wasn’t right, we lacked motivation. But then, we also have to give Brewer credit for that. In the end, we had some very nice chances, but they didn’t finish.”
In the opening five minutes, though, the Devils could do no wrong. They pinned the Witches deep from the outset, and Shariff put the home team on top at 4:59 after taking a feed from Abdulle through the middle. One on one with Brewer goalkeeper Caleb Eggert, Shariff tapped the ball into the corner for a 1-0 lead.
On the ensuing tap, the combination worked again, as Shariff raced into the box on a give-and-go with Abdulle, again picking his spot and rolling the ball over the line.
Brewer was down, but not out.
“The last two years when we’ve played them, the first 15 minutes have been the most difficult,” Poland said. “I told the guys, if we can hold it together for the first 15 minutes, I like our chances. Even with those two quick goals, I still felt pretty good, even though I didn’t feel we were playing anywhere near where we should be playing.”
Lewiston added another in the 31st minute on Abdisalan’s strike after he picked off the ball in the middle of the field, caught the goalkeeper way off his line and popped it over him and into the cage.
The Witches started the second half quickly, getting their goal in the first minute on a corner kick. The ball first dropped at the near post on the right side. Lewiston goalkeeper Austin Wing punched at the ball, which deflected to the back post, to a waiting Biswas, who touched it into the cage.
“We’ve been working on our set pieces quite a bit, our positioning, making sure we have that outside post covered,” Poland said. “That was our outside mid on that side, he made his run and it came right to him on that side.”
Lewiston tried to counter quickly, but whistle after whistle for offside derailed its efforts.
Lewiston’s defenders and midfield tightened up the middle of the field, Wing made a couple more saves and Shariff finished things off with 18:34 to play with his third, cleaning up Abdulle’s shot off the post.