WATERVILLE — How dangerous is the Winslow attack?

The consensus Friday afternoon at Webber Field was that the Black Raiders didn’t play their most complete game of the season, but they still struck quickly enough — and often enough — to post a 5-1 win over host Waterville in a Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Class B boys soccer match.

Five different players scored goals for unbeaten Winslow (7-0-1), which scored three times in a span of four minutes in the first half to break the contest open.

“When we get good possession, we can do wonders,” Winslow senior midfielder Spencer Miranda said. “Sometimes we just get into the boot-ball game, and it doesn’t work for us. It starts with our center backs, and we get the ball through the middle and play it out to our wings. That’s when we can do good things.”

Miranda, Nick Tiner, Isaac Lambrecht, Daylon Carpenter and Jack Mornault accounted for the Winslow goals. Junior goalkeeper Jake Lapierre made 13 saves and came within a few seconds of his fifth shutout of the season.

“Right now, it’s all about getting ready for the playoffs,” said Winslow head coach Aaron Wolfe, whose team entered Friday atop the Class B North Heal point standings. “This was a good win. Waterville will be in the playoffs, and they’re a good team.”

The most difficult part of playing a team so incredibly efficient with its counter-attacking is trying to assess the opposition. That’s the task that fell to Waterville head coach Kerry Serdjenian, whose team fell to 3-4-1 despite outplaying the Black Raiders for long stretches, both early in the match and then throughout the second half.

“It’s tough when you have so much talent and aren’t winning,” said Serdjenian, whose Panthers are 1-3-1 in their last five matches. “We have more older, skilled, developed players than we’ve ever had and we’re losing more games than we ever have. That’s a tough thing for me to put my finger on right now. If we can figure that out, we’ll be dangerous come playoff time.”

Waterville didn’t give Winslow many opportunities over the first 40 minutes, but when it did, the visitors were sure to cash in.

Miranda opened the scoring in the 13th minute, when a long service on a direct kick from Mike Wildes landed on his feet along the Waterville goal line.

“We needed something to get us going,” Miranda said. “That goal gave us the boost we needed, and we were able to play our game after that.”

The teams traded quality chances over the next 10 minutes, with neither Winslow’s Jake Warn nor Waterville’s Nathan Pinnette able to put away good setups in front of goal.

Lapierre’s point-blank save on Pinnette in the 22nd minute seemed to give the Black Raiders a charge, touching off a four-minute run in which Winslow could hardly be stopped.

In the 26th minute, Tiner converted a short cross from Warn to double the lead, and in the 29th minute, Lambrecht got behind the Waterville back line following a misplayed goal kick at midfield to make it 3-0. One minute later, Ben Smith’s long service from the left side off a set piece found the head of Carpenter, and Carpenter expertly finished off the header for the four-goal lead.

“Those goals kind of set the game,” Wolfe said. “We’re pretty balanced. We’re not relying on one or two players, and that’s a big key. Obviously, if you only have one or two players, the other teams can just focus on them.”

Winslow took 11 shots in the first half, put six of those on frame and walked away with the four goals.

“They finished their opportunities. They didn’t miss,” Serdjenian said. “I don’t want to just make it that simple, but more of theirs went in than ours did. We’ve got to figure out how to not give up five goals and score more than one. We possessed the ball a lot. We came out strong. We had it in their end the whole second half, but sometimes it goes that way.”

Winslow added to the lead with Mornault’s penalty kick in the 63rd minute, but Waterville pulled one back when Ethan Cayer scored in stoppage time.

Travis Barrett — 621-5621

tbarrett@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @TBarrettGWC