Marriotts Ridge's Pat Sullivan is officially no longer flying under the radar.

The Mustangs' sophomore, who came into the Oct. 7 game with River Hill having scored six times over his past four games, staked his team to a 2-0 lead over the Hawks with a header in the first half and a shot into the upper left corner early in the second. And, when the final whistle blew, those tallies were the difference in a 3-1 win that left Marriotts Ridge (8-0, 9-0) as the only remaining unbeaten team in the county.

"It's been an amazing couple weeks for him. To go from a supporting guy, like he was at the beginning of the year, to the center of the spotlight like he is now ... that's hard to do," Marriotts Ridge coach Kevin Flynn said. "I knew he was going to be good after watching him last year and putting in a ton of work in the off-season, but he's been even better than I imagined."

"I'm having a lot of fun out there," Sullivan said. "There's no pressure on me. Everyone's concentrating on Phil (Martinelli) and Josh (Stover), and that's given me a ton of chances."

Each team actually had quality chances to get on the scoreboard in the first two minutes of the game, but both goalies came through with a diving save. Stover had a shot 30 seconds in stopped by River Hill goalie Nick Voyton (six saves) and then, a minute later, River Hill's Jason Plumhoff had a breakaway of his own thwarted by Mustangs' goalie Paul Killian (three saves).

It wasn't until midway through the first half that Marriotts Ridge finally broke through. Lowell Safren fired a long throw into the box and Sullivan rose above everyone to head it into the net.

Later, nearly seven minutes into the second half, Sullivan padded the lead on a two-touch goal that turned out to be the game-winner.

"They ran us off the ball, beat us to everything, and they were ready to go right from the start," River Hill coach Matt Shagogue said. "Honestly, aside from maybe 20 minutes, they dominated us, and that's disappointing considering how big a game this was. But there's a lot of season left ... this isn't the end for us."

River Hill (6-1-1, 7-1-1) did cut the lead in half with 22 minutes left on a header by Corey Krewson off a free kick by Plumhoff. However, the Hawks never managed a tying goal before Marriotts Ridge put things out of reach with six minutes left on a score by Mike Glazer.

"River Hill's been the top of the mountain for a long time and we talked about how if we want to get there, we knew this is the hill we had to climb," Flynn said. "For our program, we needed a win like this."

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