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By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor

CLANTON – The Calera Eagles have put themselves on the cusp of securing an area title as both the boys and girls moved to 3-0 in area play with season-series sweeps of the Chilton County Tigers.

Calera’s boys soccer team defeated Chilton County 6-1 on Friday, April 4 at Chilton County High School after the girls won 10-0 in their earlier game.

While the Eagles have already clinched a spot in the 2025 boys and girls soccer playoffs, both can claim area titles outright with wins over the Benjamin Russell Wildcats on Friday, April 11 when the girls play at 5:30 p.m. and the boys start at 7:30 p.m.

Both teams can still claim area titles with losses on goal differential if Calera loses by four goals or less in the boys game or by just one goal in the girls game.

The boys came into the Chilton County game red hot off a 10-0 win over Ramsay at historic Legion Field, the home of the 1996 Olympic soccer games. Armando Perez racked up four goals, Edson Gonzalez finished the game with two goals and Alex Garcia, Matthew Doerfler, Jose Rojas and Ken Mwangi each scored a goal apiece in the win.

Calera started out the road game at Chilton County in front as Gonzalez found Sam Njoroge for the opening goal and a 1-0 lead. Gonzalez then found his goal-scoring bag as he scored off an assist from Alex Garcia to double up the lead.

Garcia found the back of the net after that thanks to an assist from Perez to extend the lead to 3-0.

The goal-scoring onslaught only continued as the half went on as Alex Montoya sent a ball over to Jaydin Andrade for the fourth goal of the game to continue rolling.

Montoya was then responsible for the final goal of the half as he assisted on David Smith’s goal to send the Eagles into halftime with a 5-0 lead.

After a long scoreless stretch to begin the second half, the Tigers struck to get on the scoreboard as it cut the deficit to 5-1 with around 10 minutes remaining in the match.

That would be the only goal that Chilton County would score as Mario Portillo Valle scored an unassisted goal to finish off the 6-1 victory off the backs of six different goalscorers.

However, the girls managed to one-up the performance from the boys, putting 10 goals past the Tigers defense without allowing a single one in return.

That helped Calera secure its second-straight 10-0 win over Chilton County to sweep the season series.

However, both the boys and girls were on the end of losing scorelines on Monday, April 7 as the boys were upset by Westminster OM in a 3-2 game at Alabaster’s Veterans Park while the girls lost to Homewood 8-0.

Calera’s boys are now 11-4-1 overall and No. 8 in Class 6A while the girls are 9-4-1 overall. The boys will hit the road on Tuesday, April 8 at Mountain Brook before both teams’ final area games against Benjamin Russell on Friday, April 11 at the Eagle Sports Complex.