HARROGATE, Tenn. — When given an opportunity, chances are
Victor Peres isn't going to miss.
The Lincoln Memorial University senior proved as much Wednesday afternoon, taking four shots on goal while making three of them to lead the Railsplitter men's soccer team to its third straight win, a 4-2 victory over North Georgia at the LMU Soccer Complex.
"The thing about Victor is his ratio between chances and conversion is very high," LMU head coach
Helio D'Anna said. "If Victor is going to have three or four chances, he's going to push in three. He did it today. I don't know what his threshold is, but I'd like to see that every game."
Peres' hat trick pushed him to a team-leading seven goals on the season. It was also his second three-goal performance within 12 games played, dating back to last year's regular-season finale at Catawba where he scored three times in a 4-1 decision on Oct. 28.
The forward started his breakout game rather quickly via a perfectly placed assist from
Miguel Reis across the middle that Peres tapped into the right corner in the 14th minute.
Just six minutes later, Peres corralled a beautiful ball from over the top, in which
Felipe de Sousa lifted over the Nighthawk defenders, before dribbling upfield and connecting for yet another quick start from the Railsplitters (6-2-2).
"It's hard for me to say that something changed as much as we put the ball in the goal finally," D'Anna said. "We talked about we have been creating, but we've missed so many goals this year. In the first half, they put away most of the changes and when you do that — I think we are pretty good."
LMU kept the goals coming in the second half. This time it was
Matteo Bufalo joining Peres' scoring party in the 48th minute as he took Reis' second assist and pushed it through for a 3-0 advantage.
North Georgia (5-4-1) tallied its first goal in the 56th minute when Eren Ozer , who also scored in the 73rd minute on bad defensive clear, finished a pass from Matheus Abreu to come within two scores.
But, the Railsplitters responded three minutes later. It was none other than Peres as he took a de Sousa ricocheted shot off the post and drilled it into the back of the navy-and-white stripped netting for LMU's fourth and final score.
"I'm not the fastest or quickest, but whenever I have the ball, try to go as fast as possible and put my teammates in a good position and maybe score a goal," Peres said.
"I hope I can do more hat tricks by the end of the season, especially if we win it."
