Eagles earn return trip to boys soccer regionals with 1-0 victory

PARMA—Some people refer to soccer as the beautiful game, but it doesn’t always have to be that way. Winning ugly is still winning.

Avon’s boys soccer team hasn’t suffered a loss in more than two months, and the defending state champions have done it primarily by playing a possession game and working the ball up the field with patience and precision passing. But Saturday in a Division II district final at Byers Field, that style wasn’t working against Wadsworth. Yet the Eagles still found a way to take a 1-0 decision.

With the victory, Avon moves on to the regional semifinals. The second-seeded Eagles will face No. 10 North Royalton, which edged Olmsted Falls in their district final, 2-1. The regional semi will be at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Brunswick High School.

“It wasn’t a beautiful win,” said coach Chris Dore. “It’s not how we want to play. For us, it didn’t look great. But it’s a win. Both sides are fighting for their high school careers right now. And also, we’re going to get everybody’s best effort, and that’s what we got tonight. Wadsworth was a really difficult opponent.”

Enter Brayden Carlin, who scored the only goal of the match just 10 minutes into the proceedings. But it wasn’t on a quality header into the upper corner of the goal. Not was it a long, twisting shot that curved just inside the post. Instead, it came on a jumbled scramble on an Avon corner kick.

London Carnie sent the ball into the box, but Wadsworth goalkeeper Cayden Taylor deflected it into the air and away from the goal. An Avon player headed the ball back into the six-yard box, and after a scramble, it ended up on the ground right in front of Carlin, who easily sent it past Taylor for his eighth goal of the season.

“These guys all want to score these beautiful goals and they’re eye-pleasing and everybody likes them,” Dore said. “But you know, the ugly ones are good, too, and they all count the same. Brayden did a great job of fighting for the ball. He scrapped and followed and put the ball in the back of the net.”

In a low-scoring sport such as soccer, getting on the scoreboard first can be of vital importance, something that is not lost on Dore and his team.

“(Getting that early goal) was very important,” Dore said. “Just the simple fact that we had a great season last year, but we are a brand-new team. But the target is still on our back, right? So, if you can score early on teams and then find the right kind of chemistry to control the game like we normally do, I feel like we’ll have a good advantage. But again, it may not be pretty soccer throughout the playoffs. It wasn’t last year, but it was exciting. The objective is to win games and continue to play.”

Carlin’s goal came on the tail end of a stretch that saw Avon have four very good scoring chances in the first 9 minutes. It appeared that the Eagles might be able to continue to pound the ball into the goalie box and come away with an easy victory. But that’s not what happened. For the remainder of the match, the chances were few and far between for both teams as the defenses took over.

Although Dore didn’t directly blame anything on the fact that the game was played on Halloween, he did say that things just felt off the entire match, including having to deal with a field that was not very well lit.

“It was kind of a weird night,” he said. “It’s kind of dark out here, and we have real black jerseys. For me looking from the sidelines, it wasn’t so easy to play and see your options. So, for us, it was kind of like better to be safe than sorry.”

Avon also got its usual outstanding effort from the defense, which posted its 11th shutout of the season. Goalkeeper Owen Huron only faced three shots, two of which were after long free kicks that he easily punched out of danger. But the third could have tied the match with just under 17 minutes to play. Wadsworth’s Evan Johnston sent a long shot toward the upper left corner of the goal, but Huron was equal to the task and deflected it over the crossbar.

It’s plays like Huron’s leaping save that can make the difference to a team that is attempting to defend its state title.

“It was a year ago, but it’s still very fresh in our minds,” Dore said. “But we’re trying to create our own identity. There’s only six players that played significant minutes in last year’s state finals game. So, as much as we want to say that we are the same team, we’re a brand-new group of players that are all trying to do it. So, it’s special for them to win at this level.”