Dunbar gets dream goal after a wake-up call to win 11th Region boys’ soccer title
Paul Laurence Dunbar had defeated Lexington Catholic twice already this season, but Bulldogs Coach James Wray knew Saturday’s 11th Region boys’ soccer tournament finals against the Knights would not be easy.
After ceding the game’s first goal early in the second half, the Bulldogs responded with two of their own for a 2-1 victory at Lafayette High School and the program’s second straight region title.
“It’s everything we expected,” Wray said. “I knew (LexCath was) going to be ready to play. I knew they were going to be fired up for this game. We were too. I thought both teams played well.”
A free kick near midfield set up LexCath’s goal as a defensive header on the fly found the Knights’ Durham Wells in the box instead of Dunbar’s keeper. Wells settled the ball and fired a shot past a diving John Sader for a 1-0 lead just over four minutes into the second half.
“I don’t know what it is about set pieces,” Wray lamented. “Some of it is unlucky. Some of it is them just wanting the ball a little more than we do sometimes.”
But his team answered immediately with a series of connecting passes in the attacking third of the field. Kasen Johnston spotted Issac Cano free in the box and Cano fired his team-leading 25th goal of the season to level the match 1-1 with 33 minutes left.
“When that first goal went in, I thought we might have our heads drop. But they didn’t,” Wray said. “They picked back up. This team has been resilient all year. We’ve been down in the last couple of games we’ve played. They just say, ‘OK, now, we’ve got to go score.’ Sometimes, it just wakes them up.”
It might have awakened most of the Bulldogs, but sophomore midfielder Ryan O’Hara thought he was dreaming when he found himself one-on-one with LexCath’s keeper later in the game.
Joany “Jio” Chavez served the ball to O’Hara in the middle of the field just as he broke behind the Knights’ back line. O’Hara won the race to the ball just inside the 18-yard box and flicked it over the sliding Nathan VanHoeve and into the net for a 2-1 lead with 16 minutes left.
“I didn’t believe it happened at first. I thought it was all a dream,” O’Hara said. He has bigger dreams still. “But we’re not done here. We’ve got a state championship to win. … This means a lot. This is my first year. I’ve never experienced this as a player, but it means a lot and hopefully, we’re not done yet.”
O’Hara, who has started a number of games but came off the bench Saturday, earned the team’s “hard hat” award for its player of the game in the most important game of the year, so far.
“He’s kept his head down and kept working all year, and he’s been able to do some nice things,” Wray said. “He’s had a lot of assists this year and it was nice for him to get on the end of the goal that won the game for us.”
State tournament draw
As the No. 5 team in the Kentucky High School Athletic Association’s end-of-season RPI ratings, Dunbar (18-3-2) will host its first-round game at 7 p.m. Tuesday against No. 12 Corbin (16-4), the 13th Region champ.
The KHSAA’s Board of Control approved changes to how the brackets are formed for boys’ and girls’ soccer at its September meeting. The new draw splits the state’s 16 regions in two — 1-8 for the west, and 8-16 for the east — with a random opponent possible in each respective zone and RPI determining home field. In past years, the first-round draw was confined to four-team zones with a home-field rotation.
This is the first year the KHSAA has used RPI for soccer in any way, although it has been published for soccer and other sports since it began being used to seed late rounds of the football playoffs in 2019.
If they advance, Dunbar will get another home game in the second round against the winner of No. 71 Perry County Central and No. 27 Boyd County. No. 2 North Oldham and No. 4 Daviess County, the two highest-ranked teams in the field, won’t fall into Dunbar’s path until the championship.
“I really don’t care who it is, I just want these boys to be ready and make sure we take care of business,” Wray said. “There’s still some issues with how they bracket the 16, but I do think that having the top RPI team host the games makes more sense than having a predetermined host.”
The state semifinals will be Oct. 27 at Frederick Douglass High School with the finals also there on Oct. 30 as part of a girls-boys championship doubleheader.
All-tournament team
Players selected for the 11th Region’s all-tournament team were: Ru Lemmer, Madison Southern; Gavin O’Shea, Madison Central; Ethan Vermillion and Adam Gritton, Frankfort; Aden Bryan and Ethan Purcell, Great Crossing; Charlie Nichols, Catesby Clay and Wells Durham, Lexington Catholic; John Sader, Joany “Jio” Chavez, Adali Diaz and tournament most valuable player Issac Cano, Paul Laurence Dunbar.
State tournament
Sixteen teams remain in the state tournament. Here are the matchups, in bracket order:
Tuesday, 7 p.m.: McCracken Co. at Ballard
Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.: Henderson Co. at Elizabethtown
Tuesday, 7 p.m.: Corbin at Paul Laurence Dunbar
Tuesday, 7 p.m.: Perry Co. Central at Boyd Co.
Monday, 7 p.m.: Somerset at Lawrence Co.
Monday, 7 p.m.: Covington Catholic at Montgomery Co.
Tuesday, 7 p.m.: Manual at North Oldham
Monday, 7 p.m.: South Warren at Daviess Co.
This story was originally published October 17, 2021 at 12:49 AM.
