LUMBERTON — Despite Tuesday’s match against Cape Fear being the first out of 14 games on its United-8 Conference slate, its result left the Lumberton boys soccer team in a wholly unfamiliar position: as a team chasing in the conference race.

Cape Fear beat the Pirates 2-0 in Tuesday’s match in Lumberton, which pitted two of the likely league contenders against each other in both squads’ conference opener.

The Colts scored a goal midway through the first half to take the lead, then put away the victory with a goal in the final minutes.

“I think we were the victim of a slow start,” Lumberton coach Kenny Simmons said. “We got off to a slow start tonight, and they had us on our heels a little bit and we did concede the first goal. We did start recovering a little bit, I thought the later stages of the first half.”

Cape Fear (4-2-1, 1-0 United-8) used an R.J. Doran goal on a 20-yard shot to take a 1-0 lead with 18:42 left in the first half; that goal represented how much of the first half playing out, with the Colts controlling the majority of the possession and the Pirates (2-4-1, 1-0 United-8) having few scoring chances.

The second half largely played out more evenly, with chances coming for both sides.

“Coming out to start the second half, we’re in the game 1-0, we’re down, but we changed some things at halftime, went with a little different formation, and came out in the second half and we were good for long stretches of the second half,” Simmons said. “But it’s kind of becoming our nemesis, we just can’t seem to put it together in that final third of the field. We’re just not creating the great, good looks at goal that we need to to score goals.”

Francisco Rodriguez scored with 2:15 remaining to give Cape Fear a 2-0 advantage.

“Give the guy credit, he hit a pretty good shot,” Simmons said. “Isaac, I think he’d be be the first to tell you he could’ve done a little bit better with that. But we were chasing the game at that point, committing a lot of guys forward and they caught us down a little bit with a lot of numbers down. … But you’ve got to give them credit defensively, Cape Fear was good tonight.”

With the first two conference games on back-to-back days due to the Labor Day holiday on Monday, the Pirates have a quick turnaround before another big United-8 match on Wednesday, traveling to face Jack Britt, who is off to a 7-1 start this season.

They’ll do so trailing in the conference standings for the first time in over three seasons after just their second conference loss since the United-8 was formed before the fall 2021 campaign.

“We’ve been the chasee, everybody’s been chasing us,” Simmons said. “(Wednesday) night is a pivotal game, we can’t afford to go 0-2 in conference. We mentioned that to the guys, so the challenge for us is getting ready mentally and physically for that game, and it’ll be a very difficult contest at their place. We need to right things (Wednesday) night and balance the conference record out at 1-1; if we do that it’ll be a step in the right direction.”