By Kevin Johnson -- Daily Sports Correspondent

WINCHESTER — For over 60 minutes of play, the contrasting strategies had played out to a stalemate.

Then Sherando midfielder Josh Mort broke the silence with a booming shot from 25 yards out into the upper left corner of the goal to lead the Warriors to a 2-0 victory over James Wood on Tuesday.

"We came out with a little bit different lineup to try to give some wake-up calls to some of our people," Sherando coach Patrick Anderson said. "Hopefully it worked."

It didn't come easy as the first half became a chess match pitting strength against strength.

Sherando attacked with the long ball and an aggressive offense while James Wood dropped 10 defenders back to protect the goal.

"We were trying to focus on containing them and those long-driven balls," Colonels midfielder Alex Barrette said. "We counterattacked when we could, and when we did it was pretty good, but we never really finished."

"We knew that they would come at us," James Wood coach Sean Welge said. "We did a pretty good job of containing their attack in the first half."

The Warriors, meanwhile, pushed 10 men into the box and took numerous shots. Sherando was led in shots taken by defenseman Ryan Witt.

"He [Coach Anderson] wanted to get some of the back guys involved in the offense and push them up," Witt said. "I don't usually get so many shots. Today was a pretty abnormal night."

In the second half, the game became more of a back-and-forth affair, with the Colonels becoming a little more aggressive on offense.

The change in style left an opening for Josh Mort, who dribbled through the Colonels' defense from midfield and nailed the first shot past keeper Wyatt Clements with 19 minutes remaining in the contest.

"Coach told us at halftime that once one comes they're all going to come." Sherando goalkeeper Dustin Butcher said.

The words proved prophetic for the Warriors as forward Carlos Chavez added the a clinching goal, bending a shot off Clements' hands and into the upper right corner of the goal with just over two minutes remaining to put the game out of reach.

"I just went for it," Chavez said. "I saw an opportunity. I thought [Clements] was going to get it, but when I saw it in the back of the net I was happy about it."

Despite the victory, the Warriors lamented their failure to follow through on scoring chances.

"We got a lot of opportunities but we kept missing them," Chavez said. "We gotta work on our finishing, but luckily we got two in the back of the net so we're happy about that."

"It's nice to get chances because you know there's a possibility that it'll come," Butcher added, "but we just weren't finishing today."

The victory for Sherando went a long way in erasing the memory of last week's loss to James Wood — a game in which the Warriors outshot the Colonels by a wide margin.

"It felt good," Butcher said. "We felt like they stole one from us last time. It's nice to get some payback."

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