Home-opening win has Wichita Wings atop indoor soccer season standings with 2-0 start
In their second year in the Major Arena Soccer League 2, the Wichita Wings are once again off to a dominant start.
Wichita held on for a 7-6 win over the Omaha Kings at Hartman Arena on Sunday, improving to 2-0 to start the 2022 season and becoming the lone unbeaten team in the Midwest division in the MASL 2 standings. The night featured the Wings wearing their retro uniforms and a touching tribute to organization legend Chico Borjas, who died in January 2021.
What makes the Wings’ successful indoor soccer revival even more exciting is that they’ve done it with a backbone of Wichita-area soccer players. All seven players who were involved in goals on Sunday have ties to the Wichita area.
Bransyn Felty (Buhler, Tabor) scored a team-high four goals, while player-coach Roger Downing added a pair of goals and Taylor Henry (Wichita South, Newman) scored one goal. David Lucio (Wichita Northwest, Fort Hays State) and Kevin Ten Eyck (Maize, Friends) added a pair of assists, while Collin Lawter (Wichita Southeast, Drake) and Daniel Sack (Maize, Friends) also added helpers.
It was a slow start to the home-opener for the Wings, which conceded a goal in the final 10 seconds of the first period to fall behind 3-1 to Omaha.
But Wichita took control in a dominant second period, as Felty scored three straight goals to net a hat trick in the second period alone and Downing added the team’s fourth to take a 5-3 lead at halftime. Downing scored the only goal of the third period to extend Wichita’s lead to 6-3, although Omaha would rally to trim the deficit to 6-5 early in the fourth period.
Felty scored what became the game-winning goal with 6:13 remaining in the fourth period to give Wichita a 7-5 lead, a cushion it needed when Omaha scored again less than two minutes later. When Omaha went all out trying to find the equalizing goal, Wichita’s defense rose to the occasion with goalkeeper Aaron Parrott coming up big.
Wichita soccer fans will have a chance to catch the Wings back in action with a two-game home swing at Hartman Arena this coming weekend, as the Wings play the Colorado Inferno at 7 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets to the Wichita Wings home games are available on Ticketmaster starting at $14.
This story was originally published January 3, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
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