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Patton’s perfect record wasn’t Lennox Charles’ primary concern Thursday evening.

The veteran Polk County soccer coach cared more about seeing how his Wolverines responded to Tuesday’s shutout loss at Hendersonville, especially given a season just in its second week.

The bounce back proved pretty exceptional. Polk County delivered a dominant first-half effort en route to a 4-0 victory over the Panthers in a Mountain Foothills 7 Conference match in Tennant Stadium.

The Wolverines (2-1, 1-1) kept possession in the Panthers’ end of the field for most of the opening 40 minutes, building a 3-0 halftime lead that could just as easily have doubled. Patton (7-1, 1-1) had scored at least three goals in every match thus far this season entering, but the early Polk onslaught put Patton on its heels and kept them there for the warm spring evening.

“It was a pretty good performance all around,” Charles said. “Obviously, it’s early, and we still have a lot of things we can do better. We did some things today that we worked on Wednesday, and those showed up, so that’s a good sign for us. It means they’re focused and paying attention to what they’re doing. We’re going to need a lot more of that.

“I looked at (Patton’s) record, but that’s why I always tell our kids I don’t care about records. Until you play everybody the first time, you really don’t know.”

Polk had a goal in the first 10 minutes waved off on an offside call, but continued to press and finally broke through in the 21st minute. Jessica Baird pushed deep into the penalty area before slipping a pass to her left to Hayden Blackwell, who struck a low roller that evaded the Patton defense and found the net for the 1-0 lead.

Kylie Lewis nearly doubled the lead 30 seconds later, striking the right upright, and Blackwell almost tallied a minute later off a brilliant through pass from Lewis. With that level of pressure continuing, a goal was inevitable, and Blackwell delivered it in the 29th minute, heading in a perfectly-placed Reeve Carroll corner kick to the back post for the two-goal advantage.

Carroll appeared to score two minutes later off another corner, but a foul call negated that effort. The freshman, though, did find the net in the 35th minute with a hard strike from outside the top of the penalty box into the right corner of the goal.

Patton missed a chance to trim the lead 10 minutes into the second half, a shot at an open net sailing wide. That was one of the few chances the Panthers had, with goalkeeper Cate Brown making a leaping one-handed save in the final two minutes to preserve the shutout but otherwise fairly untested throughout the evening.

Polk’s final goal came with 12 minutes remaining on a Lewis strike.

“I was glad we got off to a good start, because I knew later on we’d slow down a bit, like we did,” Charles said. “We needed to rest some legs a little bit. We didn’t get to do it as early as I would have liked. I really wanted to get a goal in the first 10 or 15 minutes (of the second half), and then I could do more of what I did at the end.”