MONTEGO BAY, St James — Despite claiming his team has overachieved so far in the season, Cornwall College c oach Dr Dean Weatherly believes his team is a solid semi-final contender in the ISSA/Wata daCosta Cup.

Cornwall College are unbeaten through their first nine games, winning eight and drawing the other and have wrapped up Zone A honours for the fourth time in the last six years and Weatherly says so far things have gone according to plans.

“Based on the work that we have been doing since the summer, this team has been building from strength to strength, they have come a long way and we can see where they are more focused than before now that they can see their real potentials,” he said.

With only a handful of players remaining from the team that won a record 12th competition in 2016, Weatherly says the team is a relatively young one.

“It seems the experience of the older players is rubbing off on the young ones as they have been lifting their games and improving with every game,” Weatherly noted.

He said it is the overall team effort that has impressed him rather that individuality.

“It is the team in itself that is a surprise in how they are performing; I think they are overachievers right now at this stage of the competition… they are much further ahead than I expected them to be in their understanding of the game and their execution of their roles,” he said.

Winning all their games so far, he said was one of the goals they set as a team at the start of the season, as well as going through the first round without conceding a goal.

They took their clean sheet all the way to the second half of their fifth game when Maldon High were the first to score on them, ending the run at 414 minutes.

Weatherly said despite already securing the top spot from Zone A, there were no plans to ease up in their last two games.

“We can’t do that, we must maintain our momentum going forward, we are still pushing hard, no easing off the throttle.”

Weatherly said this team is eyeing the top four of the competition.

“We think we have a good team, once you get to the semi-finals, anything can happen there and I realistically think we have the chance to get to the semi-finals with this team,” he ended.

— Paul Reid