WICHITA — The Great Bend High School boys’ soccer team continues to improve at the Titan Classic Tournament, hosted by Wichita South.
In the Panthers’ second game of the tournament, they beat Circle 8-3 on Wednesday. It came three days after they beat Mulvane 10-0 on Monday and advances the Panthers to the championship game against host Wichita South at 1 p.m. on Saturday.
 “The team is looking really, really good,” Panthers head coach Gus Prieto said. “They are really starting to play together as a team.”
Gus Prieto said he feels that his team will do well against Wichita South.
 “We are ready to win,” the head coach said. “We have been working really hard and if we play like we did (Wednesday), then I think we can do it.”
“This is the first championship game that the Great Bend varsity team has been in. The junior varsity team won a championship like this my first year as head coach of that team, but the varsity team has never been to a championship game, so this is really important.”
Against Circle, Noel Rodriguez scored four goals to lead the Panthers.
“Noel’s goals were good,” Gus Prieto said. “Two of them were scored when the team made about 10 passes before finding him in front of the goal and he just scored.”
The other four Panthers goals were scored by Alex Urias, Kevin Manase, Jose Santana and Michael Prieto.
In the opening game on Monday, Oscar Torres scored five goals, but Great Bend was far more well-balanced against the Thunderbirds.
Gus Prieto said that Manase stood out in the game against Circle.
“Kevin Manase was really good at center-mid,” the coach said. “He is fast, and he controlled the ball well. He even got one of the goals.”
Gus Prieto said that two of the three Circle goals came from penalty kicks.
“They had a couple of guys who were seniors,” he said. “They were big and strong and our defenders did a really good job defending them.
“They just got a couple of calls when they were shoulder to shoulder and their forwards went down in the box.”