AMBUSH SPLIT WEEKEND SERIES WITH UTICA

by Jim Fossell

St. Charles, MO (January 19, 2020) – The St. Louis Ambush split the weekend series with Utica City FC when Utica won 11-5 Sunday afternoon at the Family Arena. The Ambush won the first match in the weekend series Friday night. Sunday’s loss dropped the Ambush to 5-6 on the season, while Utica improved to 7-3.

Utica took a 3-1 lead in the opening frame on goals by Cristhian Segura, Bo Jelovac and Ricardo De Queiroz Diegues. The lone Ambush goal came from JT Thomas.

UCFC grew the lead to 4-1 just over two minutes into the second quarter on a goal by Moises Gonzalez. At 4:01 of the second quarter, Ambush goalkeeper Paulo left the field after going down during a play with an apparent foot injury. Without a backup goalkeeper dressed, Lucas Almeida came in as the sixth attacker and Diegues scored his second of the contest 47 seconds later to give the visitors a 5-1 lead. After a trip to the training room, Paulo returned to the game at 8:28. The Ambush chiseled away at the lead when Almeida took a pass from Pablo Da Silva and executed a well placed shot into the corner of the goal. Jake Schindler answered for Utica less than two minutes later to give his team a 6-2 lead that would hold until the buzzer signaled halftime.

Utica continued scoring in the third quarter on Jelovac’s second, then James Togbah drew Paulo out of the goal, passed it to Darren Toby, who then scored on the open goal to make the score 8-2. The Ambush got one back when Thomas took a shot, blocked by Utica goalkeeper Andrew Coughlin, who was then out of position to stop a shot by Tony Walls, for the third Ambush goal of the game.

The final stanza kicked off with Almeida in as the sixth attacker for St. Louis, who scored just 32 seconds into the period. Oitomeia passed to Walls, who passed to Thomas, who headed the ball in, reducing UCFC’s lead to 8-4. Utica’s Onua Obasi went on a breakaway and found little resistance as he scored to make it a 9-4 match. The visitors ran up the score a bit more when Ben Ramin tallied an empty netter halfway through the fourth quarter. Pablo Da Silva scored for the Ambush late kin the quarter to make the score 10-5, but Moises Gonzalez quickly answered for Utica for an 11-5 score with just over two minutes remaining.

Next for the Ambush is a trip to the Sunshine State for back-to-back games next weekend. The Orlando Seawolves host the Ambush Friday, January 24 at 6:35 p.m. CST. The next night, the Ambush travel to Lakeland to tangle with the Florida Tropics Saturday, January 25 agt 4:05 p.m.