by Owen Miklos ’16
It’s been a long season.
But it all culminated today at MAPFRE Stadium in Columbus, where the St. Ignatius Wildcats shut out Davidson 4-0 for an emphatic state championship — their second in a row, their seventh overall.
The first half of the game got off to a slow start. Sloppy play marked the first three minutes of the championship game, where both St. Ignatius and Hilliard Davidson kept the ball around midfield until the Wildcats took control. The next five minutes saw played centered around the Hilliard end of the field, and a few corner kicks engendered opportunities to get on the board early. David Hoyle, the Davidson goalie, made critical saves in that early going to keep the St. Ignatius ‘Cats off the board early and keep his team in the game.
Lawrence Karpeh ‘16 of the Wildcats got aggressive in the early going and kept his foot on the gas throughout the first 40 minutes of the game. At around the 13:30 mark, Karpeh was called for two fouls within seconds of one another, and the Ignatius student section made sure to let the officials know what they thought about the calls. Karpeh, for his part, looked unfazed.
It was Karpeh who led the offensive drive three minutes later. Stephen Milhoan ‘17, always an offensive threat for the Cleveland ‘Cats, scored the first goal of the game at 10:09, a driving liner to Hoyle’s left side that found the back of the net to give Ignatius the 1-0 advantage.
It was a slow-paced, plodding first half of soccer. St. Ignatius, heading to the locker room, knew that if they were to hold on, they’d need to come out with some more fire in the second half.
They delivered. It was evident from the first few minutes of the final half of 2015 soccer that they had no intention of letting Davidson back into this game. Adam Haas ‘17, the junior defenseman, was a one-man wrecking crew for Ignatius, applying slide-tackles wherever necessary when Davidson looked like they were shifting momentum. The rest of the team backed up Haas on the defensive end, making sure to keep the ball in the hands of the Cleveland ‘Cats and wind down the clock.
The nail in the coffin for the Davidson Wildcats came at the 59’ mark, when Hayden Parente ‘16 delivered a screaming goal past a diving David Hoyle to put St. Ignatius up by two goals. Nobody was more excited than Dylan McKeon and the crew from SIBN, blowing out the ears of headphone users everywhere with an emphatic call, and a relieved St. Ignatius crowd roared in approval as their team broke the close game wide open.
With 20 minutes then left in the game, Parente and the Wildcats played keep-away, striking a balance between maintaining the attack and preventing Davidson from getting their foot in the door.
Riley Houde ‘17, the hero from the State Semifinal game vs. St. John’s Jesuit, scored Ignatius’s third goal of the game with 5:20 left to go, weaving between a quickly fading Davidson team and casually flicking a goal past Hoyle. Forty seconds later, Lawrence Karpeh got in on the action, scoring in the midst of the confusion brought on by junior Alex Gotsky’s fall in front of the goal. With a bout of applause from the Ignatius student section, Gotsky got back to his feet and walked off the field under his own weight, giving the fans time to celebrate Karpeh’s goal anew.
The players rose their fists in victory once the final whistle sounded, and with good reason. They are the 2015 Soccer State Champions.
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Game updates will post here. Listen in to the SIBN audio feed here at 11:50 am.
