The Dawson County varsity boys' soccer team defeated Rabun County last week in Tiger by a 3-0 score to pick up a big Region 8-AA win.

On March 23, the Tigers lost a heartbreaker to region opponent East Hall, 1-0, on penalty kicks.

The Tigers are currently 6-5 overall and 2-1 in region play.

Coach Jed Lacey's boys held a 1-0 halftime advantage against the Wildcats on March 21.

Freshman Sal Mendoza pushed the ball past the Rabun goalie after an indirect kick by teammate Josh Lund with 8:39 left before halftime.

Josh Lund, junior, added another goal off a Drew Bishop throw to put Dawson in front 2-0 less than 2 minutes into the second half.

The Tigers sealed the game just 4 minutes later when Mendoza scored his second goal off of an assist from Bishop to pull out the win.

"We are so shorthanded that I never know who we are going to have to play each game. The injury bug has really hurt us this year. I have never had so many injuries to key players in one season like this," Lacey said.

The Tigers play was tense to start out the game, according to the coach.

"We had to fight most of the first half to find ourselves, but once we scored our first goal we relaxed and just played Tiger soccer and the defense led by Gunnar Armstrong and Stanton Rogers along with Ben Leaver just hammered people and they are so fast they make it hard for teams to get near the goal," Lacey said.

It was a tough task on Friday with No. 5-ranked East Hall coming to Dawsonville.

In a hotly contested game, both teams remained scoreless at the end of regulation.

Dawson had a chance to put the game away with about 2 minutes remaining. Josh Lund headed in a goal, but it was waved off by the referee due to an offsides call.

After two frantic 5-minute overtime periods the score remained 0-0.

The game was decided on penalty kicks.

East Hall (7-1, 3-0) took the upper hand and outscored Dawson County 5-4 to take the win.

Jorge Meza, Julio Avila, Edgar Cerrano, Saul Lopez and Enrique Valencia all made penalty shots for the Vikings.

Tiger goalie Brooks Fulford broke the record for number of shutouts in a season with seven.

"Man that was one of the best games I have ever been around. It was a 15 round heavy weight fight. Both teams just kept taking punches but they would not go down," Lacey said.