BOARDMAN — The Boardman Spartans boys soccer team had only given up 18 goals on the season. Though they had only scored 29 on the season.

They had six wins by shutout.

Wednesday, they added another shutout and scored four fewer goals than they had all season.

Yes. Four goals fewer than 29.

Behind 13 different scorers, the Spartans beat the Canton McKinley Bulldogs in a Division I sectional semifinal, 25-0.

“We were fired up,” Boardman senior defender Angel Perez said. “We felt a little disrespected with the seed we got. We wanted to make a statement.”

Perez scored his first goal for the Spartans (10-6-1) as they put up 38 shots on goal with a 66 percent rate as the Bulldogs mustered just one shot on goal for the game.

“It was a memorable one,” Perez said. “My coach put me up top. He wanted me to get one. I wanted one. My teammates wanted me to get one. It was great. I loved it.”

The disrespect that Boardman felt coming into this matchup stemmed from their lower-than-expected seed in this matchup. They came in ranked seventh.

“Unfortunately, if I have to be honest with you, this is what happens when you have a flawed and unethical voting system for seeding,” Boardman coach Eric Simione said. “We should be the three seed in this tournament. When all the Canton schools are going to get together and vote against a Youngstown school just so we have to be on the road.

“This game should have never even existed. We should have had a bye tonight. I don’t know what to say about that. If the Northeast district board thinks their system is ethical, they need to re-evaluate their system.”

Ryan Johnston led the Spartans with a double hat trick as he and Cole Congson got Boardman rolling with goals less than 3 minutes into the contest.

“We were just shooting tonight,” Congson said. “Coach told us to score. He wanted diversity in the scoring section. He got it.”

All in all, Johnston notched the double hat trick, Congson added five goals, and Jake Hughes scored his first two goals of the year.

“It’s certainly something you don’t set out to do,” Simione said. “We wanted to come out and play. We wanted to have a good night. We wanted to control the ball. We had a lot of guys in there that hadn’t scored at all this year. We had the bench in the game. It’s not like we were purposely doing this.”

Boardman’s win was their 10th on the season. The last time the Spartans had 10 wins in a season was in 1998. They’ll look to continue building on those wins when they play they second-seeded North Canton Hoover on Saturday.

“We told them to treat the second half, no disrespect to Canton McKinley, as practice,” Simione said. “We’re going to let them take (today) off to warm up and dry off. We wanted to use this as preparation. Hoover is a very good team. We know that. I give Hoover respect. They voted us three seed.

“They’re not happy because as the two seed, they know they’re not supposed to be playing a team of our caliber in their first game. I think it’s going to be a good game. We haven’t played Hoover in a few years so we don’t have anything to compare or match up that way. We just have to prepare for what we’ve been told they do. I think it should be a good game. I trust this team to give their best effort and hope for a good outcome.”