East Limestone showed its dominance on the soccer field, sweeping both the boys and girls Limestone County tournament championships Saturday afternoon at Tanner High School.

The boys defeated West Limestone 4-0, while the girls took a 2-0 win over Elkmont.

James Oliver scored a first-half hat trick to lead East to the boys championship, as the Indians put on a dominating performance to win their second consecutive county championship.

East Limestone had the advantage in possession and spent much of the first half in West Limestone’s half of the field.

The Wildcats defense held out for nearly 20 minutes, but East broke through when Alex Wedgman won the ball in midfield and passed ahead to Cody Tiemann on the wing. Tiemann sent in a cross to Oliver, who buried the chance to put the Indians up 1-0 with 17:44 remaining in the half.

East struck again eight minutes later when Syrus James passed the ball to Oliver on the right side of the goal, who calmly slid it into the left corner.

Oliver basically put the game on ice with 3:39 remaining in the first half when he once again found himself in front of goal and buried the chance to make it 3-0.

“It was exciting and unexpected,” Oliver said of his three goals. “We played really well offensively and defensively, and the midfield worked well together. The ball just fell to me, and I did what I had to do.”

Forwards may only get a couple of chances per game to score. Oliver said it takes a calm mind to be able to finish those chances when they come.

“There’s always a rush, like you want to kick the ball as hard as you can,” Oliver said. “But you’ve got to keep calm, lean over the ball and just slide it into the corner.”

East added a goal 10 minutes into the second half when Jason Degroff passed to Tiemann, who scored to give the Indians a four-goal advantage.

“We haven’t been scoring a lot of goals early on in the year,” East Limestone coach Jeremy Mitchell said. “We kept telling the guys they were pressing a little bit. We told them to sit back and relax, make our passes and things were going to open up, and that’s what happened today.”

East Limestone was also strong defensively, only allowing West Limestone to have two shots on goal.

“That’s one thing we’ve always prided ourselves on is defense,” Mitchell said. “We put a strong emphasis on it, and it shows. I think we’ve already got four shutouts this year. Our keeper (Parker Moran) has played really well, and those four on the back line are playing really well, too.”

Girls final

East Limestone 2, Elkmont 0

East Limestone got some revenge on Elkmont for a loss earlier in the season by scoring two second-half goals to win its fourth consecutive county championship.

Elkmont defeated East Limestone 3-2 in overtime March 7, and the Red Devils had the possibility of doing it again with the tournament championship game scoreless at halftime.

But a halftime pep talk and two second-half goals were enough to give the Indians yet another county title.

“Elkmont had already beaten us once this year, and we’ve had a lot of injuries,” coach Jeremy Mitchell said. “We just told them at halftime to fight and play their best and see where that gets us. Today, it got us a couple of goals and a county championship.”

East opened the scoring a few minutes in to the second half, when a cross deflected off an Elkmont defender into the goal for an own goal.

The score remained 1-0 until late, but East Limestone finally put the game way with 7:19 remaining when Rebekah Phelps sent a pass to Ryleigh Black, who scored to give the Indians a comfortable advantage.

The East Limestone defense was then able to see out the game without Elkmont having a real scoring opportunity. Emily Edelman, who was named the tournament MVP, and Miriam Villamonte kept Elkmont from breaking forward in attack and won the ball back in the midfield numerous times.

Mitchell said it was a much different game than the one against Elkmont earlier this month.

“We came out flat in that game and didn’t play very well at all,” he said. “That’s one thing we told them, is they’ve got to play the whole game. In that area game, they didn’t. We told them if they want to win this championship and keep that trophy at East Limestone, they’re going to have to play the whole game, and they did.”

Boys Semifinal

West Limestone 3, Tanner 2

Ivan Mendoza scored on a penalty kick in overtime to lift West Limestone past Tanner in the tournament semifinal Friday night.

Shane James and Rudy Teletor had goals in regulation, while Mendoza had an assist. Goalkeeper Christian Clemmons had 16 saves.

East Limestone defeated Ardmore 1-0 in the other boys semifinal, while Elkmont defeated West Limestone 2-0 and East Limestone beat Tanner 4-0 in the two girls semifinal games.