Through four games the Falcons, ranked No. 1 in this week’s N&O boys soccer rankings and the Eurosportscoreboard.com 4-A rankings, have outscored their opponents by a combined 14-2, including a 3-1 win at Athens Drive on Wednesday to open Tri-Nine Conference play.

“We’ve started (the season) really well,” Green Hope coach Andrew Chadwick said. “We’ve only given up two goals so far, and the goal we gave up (against Athens Drive) was against most of our second-team defenders. But that’s good experience for them that’ll pay dividends down the road. We’ve got a converted midfielder in Will Moore playing at defender and doing a great job. And we don’t have a leading scorer; we’ve got a lot of guys who can score.”

The Falcons (4-0, 1-0 Tri-Nine) are unbeaten, but Chadwick said his team got a bit of a wake-up call Monday against Leesville Road in a game that didn’t make it out of the second minute because of a severe thunderstorm.

“For a minute and 28 seconds – before the storm hit – Leesville Road killed us,” he said. “I think that woke us up a little bit. We have to realize we’ve got a target on our back. Against Athens we played a lot better.”

Senior midfielder Tyler Carroll made it 1-0 Falcons at the 32:11 mark of the first half when he sent a header into the back of the net, capitalizing on an early corner kick. Then both defenses controlled the game for the remainder of the opening 40 minutes.

Green Hope led 1-0 at the break, but opened the second half aggressively attacking the Athens Drive goal. And it paid off less than two minutes in when senior forward Drew Altman leaked through the Jaguars’ defense and senior midfielder Rodrigo Ortiz found him wide open just in front of the net for the easy score.

The Falcons pushed their lead to three with 26:20 left in the game on a Morgan Stevenson goal from 10 yards out. Athens goalkeeper Matt Williams attempted to clear the ball, but the kick went right to the senior forward, who immediately sent the ball into the middle of the goal.

“The (Athens) goalkeeper wanted the defender to pick it up,” Stevenson said. “But there was a miscommunication between the two of them. I was just fortunate to be in the right spot.”

The Jags (3-2, 0-1) scored their lone goal of the night at the 16:22 mark when senior midfielder Andrew Barber snuck the ball just inside the left front corner of the goal.

Athens coach Travis Seese was pleased with the way his team played, but admitted a few miscues made the difference in the game.

“That shows what a quality team Green Hope is,” Seese said. “We only made three or four mistakes tonight and almost all of them ended up in the back of the net.”