Highlanders overwhelm Bryan, clinch district title

THE WOODLANDS, Texas - The Woodlands Highlanders clinched their seventh straight district soccer championship with Friday night’s resounding 9-1 victory over Bryan at The Woodlands High School.

The victory, which moved the state-ranked Highlanders to 16-0-1 overall and 10-0 in District 14-5A play, was highlighted by Bubacarr Jobe’s 15-yard bicycle kick into the left corner of the net after taking a perfect cross from Tony Arana to give the Highlanders a 4-0 lead only 13 minutes into the match.

“I have done a couple of those this year,’’ said Jobe, who finished the contest with four goals, including a left-footed goal off his own rebounded shot with 21:45 left in the first half.

“Buba is just a spectacular player,’’ said The Woodlands head coach Hans Kleinschmidt. “Everyone is going to be talking about the bicycle kick, but we see him do that kind of stuff about three times a day in practice.’’

The Highlanders, who have put together an impressive win streak since tying Lake Travis 0-0 early in the season, wasted no time taking control of the district contest as Miguel Bernardo took a direct pass from Macrelo Tamez and beat Bryan’s goalie to the right corner of the net to give The Woodlands a 1-0 lead only 28 seconds into the match.

One minute later, Bernardo scored his second goal after taking a pass from Tamez just past midfield, outrunning the Bryan defense and putting a nifty one-one-on one move to beat the bewildered Bryan goalie into the right corner.

Tamez added another goal on a direct kick with 36:53 left in the first half and the rout was on.

“When you score three goals in three minutes, that will take it out of most people,’’ Kleinschmidt said. “We knew they were struggling and giving up a lot of goals early. We wanted to try and score a lot of goals early.’’

The Woodlands went up 6-0 on a pair of Jobe goals before Bryan, now 0-9-1 in district, was able to score its only goal of the night at Al Dahir Diaz’s 30-yard direct kick with only :01 left in the first half.

Jobe, Bernardo and Ricky Trevino all scored goals in the second half for The Woodlands, which is looking to return to the state tournament for the first time since 2010.

“(Winning district) was our goal (tonight),’’ Kleinschmidt said. “We wanted to start strong and finish with that killer instinct. We showed that.’’

The Woodlands next will travel to meet College Park at 7 p.m. Tuesday. It will conclude the regular season against Oak Ridge on Friday.

“College Park and Oak Ridge are south county rivals,’’ Kleinschmidt said. “College Park will fight us for every ball. We have to be prepared to play.’’

Jobe believes this team has what it takes to compete for the Region II crown.

“Winning district means a lot to us,’’ he said. “(But) I think if we work together, we can win against every team. It just depends on how hard we work to keep going.’’