Goals galore lead Myrtle Beach soccer past Beaufort

You can’t necessarily say that Myrtle Beach’s magic number is five.

But it sounds pretty nice.

For 12th time this year, the Seahawks boys soccer team reached that figure offensively. This time, it was in a 5-2 win over Beaufort in the second round of the Class AAA playoffs.

“That’s a good situation to be involved in,” Myrtle Beach coach Jason Himmelsbach said. “The most difficult thing is to score a goal. A lot of good teams struggle to score goals. And we’ve had a lot of good teams that have a hard time. It’s a tough game; it’s designed to be that way. But to know that stat, it’s comforting. It’s reassuring to know you have the firepower, if something happens and you get down a goal or two, you’ve got the capability to put the goals together in big numbers.”

It’s certainly no fluke.

Following Thursday’s win, the Seahawks (18-4-1) have reached the five-goal count in just over half of their 23 games. Some of them came against measurably lesser competition.

But seven of the 12 were against 2015 South Carolina playoff teams, including both of Myrtle Beach’s opponents – Airport and Beaufort – in this year’s postseason.

Against the Eagles (15-5-1), Myrtle Beach was able to get to that figure with a strong second half.

After Adolpho Aguilar and Jarvin Ramirez paired up for one each before halftime, Franc Lamcja got into the mix just four minutes into the second half on a breakaway goal.

Beaufort’s Jack Lesesne countered when he capitalized on a penalty kick following a hand ball. But that’s when the Seahawks’ final push put the game away.

Lamcja added another with under 10 minutes to go, and Aguilar kept pace with his second of the game two minutes later.

“If we play well, we can score a lot. We’re a good team,” Lamcja said. “If we come out strong, we’ll score a couple goals.”

This was the fourth postseason game in the past three seasons in which the Seahawks reached the five-goal plateau. Adding to any of those aforementioned counts, though, probably shouldn’t be expected as Myrtle Beach progresses deeper into the bracket.

Himmelsbach isn’t planning on that when his team heads to fellow No. 1 seed (and Class AAA No. 2 ranked) Brookland-Cayce on Saturday. Then again, he also said doing so against Beaufort – another state-ranked squad – wasn’t something he envisioned prior to kickoff.

“This team was a good team,” Himmelsbach said. “I’ll put them up against some of the other good teams in the state. … To score five or six in the second, third or fourth round of the playoffs, it’s more difficult. But we certainly have the weapons to be capable of doing that.”

This story was originally published May 7, 2015 at 9:07 PM with the headline "Goals galore lead Myrtle Beach soccer past Beaufort."