The slide continues for the Richmond Senior High School, who dropped their fourth consecutive game Wednesday with a 4-0 loss to the East Mecklenburg Eagles.

Although challenging the net early, the Raiders failed to hit pay dirt, allowing the Eagles to jump out to a 1-0 lead by halftime.

“Our goal is always to possess, and do things the right way. At halftime, we were there, but the adjustment was a little more effort and finish our chances,” EMHS coach Joel Eddy said.

In second second half, EMHS kept the pressure on the Raiders with more than 10 corner kicks before finally sinking one on a header from Hugh Loeffler. Once the Eagles took a 2-0 lead with 17 minutes left in regulation, a Richmond comeback seemed less and less likely with each passing minute. The Eagles scored twice more to take the score to 4-0, but those scores came long after both Eddy and Raiders coach Chris Larsen pulled their starters.

“We struggled in the first four games with finishing. I told them at the water break, ‘We’ve had 15 corner kicks, at some point we have to put one in,’” Eddy said.

With the win, the Eagles improved to 3-2 while the Raiders dropped to 1-5. Despite suffering a shutout, Coach Larsen said he continues seeing day-to-day improvements in his squad. The only thing holding his team back is consistent play throughout all 80 minutes.

“We’re playing much better. We did things better tonight than we did Monday night. We’re connecting passes a little bit. Tonight, I feel we built a little bit better at the midfield to give us a few more bodies up on the attacking end that gave us the chances that we had,” Larsen said. “We still reverted back to playing too many long balls over the top and trying to get them on a counter. There are a lot of teams you can’t beat purely on speed there has to be a little bit of build up.”

With the Labor Day holiday approaching, the Raiders will have a lengthy break until returning to the pitch next Thursday on the road against Terry Sanford, then open Sandhills Athletic Conference play the following Tuesday on the road against Southern Lee.

Kickoffs for both games are set for 7 p.m.

“We did better at phases of the game, we just didn’t put 80 minutes together. We conceded way too many corners tonight. They scored off of two of them … I keep preaching to the guys, we got to get over that hump. We’re going to get over that hump. Scoring is one of those things. It’s like making free throws. The first one builds confidence and makes the second one easier to go in,” Larsen said.