In a battle between undefeated soccer teams, 1-A North Moore (3-0) and 4-A Richmond Senior (5-0-1) Tuesday in Rockingham, it was a match of two halves with the first half being an offensive barrage with the two teams entering the locker room tied at 3-3.

The second half turned into a defensive struggle with each team’s coaches making the necessary defensive adjustment. However with four minutes left, the Raiders scored what turned out to be the winning goal for a 4-3 victory.

Richmond Senior wasted little time jumping out to a 2-0 lead in the first 11 minutes of the match.

A minute after the Raiders took their 2-0 lead, Mustang senior Gerbacio Cabrera sent a pass across the field from the right side where sophomore Pedro Ugarte sent a header past the Raider goalkeeper.

Ugarte tied the match about 10 minutes later when he scored his second goal of the game, giving him a team-high seven goals for the season.

With 14 minutes left in the opening half, Richmond moved the ball into a crowd in front of the Mustangs’ goal. The North Moore defenders couldn’t clear the ball from in front of the net and a Raider tapped the ball into the net for a 3-2 lead.

The Mustangs rallied at the 6:33 mark when Ugarte sent a long pass up the field where senior teammate Luis Solache outhustled a Raider defender for possession of the ball. Solache then beat the Richmond goalkeeper, tying the match at 3-3 as the first half came to a close.

“This was a highly competitive, hard-fought contest between two undefeated teams” said North Moore coach Michael Shamberger. “As much as the first half was an offensive battle the second half was a defensive game as both teams made adjustments at the halftime to slow the other team down.”

The game was back-and-forth in the second half with very few scoring opportunities until the Raiders found a way to take the lead with four minutes left in the match.

“The Mustangs fought hard to get the tying goal in the waning minutes and had a couple of scoring opportunities but did not convert,” said Shamberger.

Sophomore Danny Garcia played three-quarters of the match as the Mustang goalkeeper and recorded three saves. Garcia was replaced by junior Edgar Catalan for the final quarter of the contest. He finished with one save.

North Moore, who is ranked 15th in the latest Eurosportscoreboard.com 1-A state polls, out shot the host Raiders 14-7. North Moore finished with 10 corner kicks and Richmond had six.