Cougars soccer upsets top-seeded Greenwood in C1D6 semis
· Yahoo Sports
The fourth-seeded New Heights Christian Academy/McAuley Cougars’ soccer team scored twice in the first period and hung on for a 2-0 upset of the top-seeded Greenwood Blue Jays in their Class 1 District 6 semifinal Tuesday night at Springfield’s Cooper Soccer Complex.
With the win, the Cougars (8-12) advance to play the second-seeded Fair Grove Eagles (17-5-1) for the district championship at 6 p.m. Monday at the Cooper Soccer Complex. Fair Grove earned its spot in the Class 1 District 6 final by outlasting third-seeded New Covenant Academy (7-14-1) by a 1-0 score on Tuesday.
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New Heights advanced to Tuesday’s semifinal with a 2-0 win over the Thomas Jefferson Independent Day School Cavaliers (5-7) on Monday.
The Cougars avenged a 3-0 early-season loss to Greenwood (11-7) on Tuesday.
First-year Cougars head coach Chris Roberts talked about the difference in his squad from that earlier 3-0 loss to Tuesday’s 2-0 win.
“That was probably one of the worst games we played,” Roberts said of the early-season loss. “Their first two goals were off our mistakes and the third goal came after we shifted and were being overaggressive trying to get a goal in late in the game. I look back at that game and say we beat ourselves. Greenwood is a very good team. They earned that one-seed and we knew it would be a tough game last night. I think some things have come together for us over the past month in particular that have made us a better team than we were at the beginning of the season. I’m proud of the boys for pulling together and focusing on some very specific things that we knew we needed to do better in order to be competitive in the postseason.”
On Tuesday, head captain and senior defender Justin Bgoni got the Cougars on the board off a corner kick by junior Brogan Reither at about the 20-minute mark of the first half. The go-ahead score was Bgoni’s first goal of the season.
Roberts weighed in on Bgoni’s goal.
“He’s our defensive sweeper, but we always bring him up on corner kicks because of his height,” Roberts said.
New Heights increased its lead to 2-0 with about five minutes left in the half off a long goal from sophomore center midfielder Titus Clevenger from about 40 yards out.
“The wind kind of carried it over the keeper’s head,” Roberts said of the Clevenger score. “It was a very windy game. That first half we had the wind at our backs a little bit and we knew it. He took that shot knowing that the wind would probably carry it a little bit and it did. It worked out.”
From there, the Cougars defense took over in the scoreless second half. That’s something Roberts has become accustomed to with in this year’s squad.
“That’s been our team this season,” Roberts said. “We are a very defensive team and have played really, really tough this season. We have an excellent goalkeeper (senior captain Rush Stewart). I would say he’s going to be All Region if not All State this year. He keeps us in games along with a solid defense.”
Monday’s championship game affords another chance at redemption for New Heights. Without two of its key starters, the Cougars faced Fair Grove last Wednesday in their regular season finale and fell 3-2.
This time, it’s for higher stakes — a spot in the Class 1 state quarterfinals.
The Cougars record this season — like most years — is not indicative of the team’s potential as they face a schedule loaded with much larger schools. New Heights logged seven shutouts in its eight wins and among the team’s 12 losses, four were in extra time and four were 1-point losses.
“I definitely think playing tougher teams helps us develop,” Roberts said. “I think that’s true of any sport. You get better when you are forced to play against tougher opponents. You learn a lot from those games. We’re a Class 1 school and its hard to find 20 games against other Class 1 schools, so we kind of have to put some higher class schools on our schedule. I think our athletic director (Phillip Jordan) does a good job of finding schools that we can be competitive with.”