‘A little bit more risk’ sends Henry Clay boys to soccer state championship match
It took just 39 seconds for Henry Clay to take the lead against Oneida Baptist Institute during the Blue Devils’ 4-0 victory in the boys state soccer tournament semifinals at Paul Laurence Dunbar on Thursday night.
Junior Braden Cundiff, responsible for two of Henry Clay’s four goals on Halloween night, wasted no time in executing the game plan that “set the tempo for the rest of the game.”
“Coming into the match,” Cundiff said. “Everyone didn’t want to take it for granted, and we just wanted to go out, score first in the first, like, five minutes. Show them we’re here to play, and it was just important to get that first goal.”
The Blue Devils (19-3-4) knocked off Covington Catholic (2-1) and Campbell County (6-0) on the road in the first two rounds of the tournament, and head coach Jason Behler expected a difficult matchup against Oneida Baptist (19-4) — especially in less-than-ideal conditions due to rainy weather. The hope with scoring the first goal, in Behler’s mind, is that it will “usually loosens things up.” Unfortunately for the Blue Devils, he didn’t see that happening against the Mountaineers once Cundiff put Henry Clay on the scoreboard.
“I actually think that, mentally, we went down a little bit after that,” Behler said. “We thought that it was then going to be easy, and we were not focused in the right moments. I thought we could have had two or three (goals) in that first five or seven minutes, and we just weren’t clinical in that final third. And we then really had to solve some problems once they settled in. But scoring that first goal is paramount to going on to be successful.”
The Blue Devils dominated possession, and finished the match with 29 shots (to the Mountaineers’ four), largely evenly distributed between the first (13) and second (16) halves.
“(Oneida Baptist likes) to keep three guys really high up the field,” Behler explained. “We saw that that’s how they like to play. We probably pressed our wing-backs up a little bit less as a result of that, and tried to stay numbers up in the back. But in the second half, we got a little bit more adventurous and played three-against-three in that back. And I think that is what allowed us to, you know, generate more opportunities, more dangerous chances, was just taking a little bit more risk.”
Even though they may not have closed the deal on opportunities in that first half, there was no question among the team that a state finals appearance was well within reach.
Cundiff (25 goals, 10 assists this season) and senior forward Marco Messerli (18 goals, 18 assists), the Blue Devils’ leading goal scorers, felt the weight of the matchup, and persevered to both restart and maintain the offensive momentum in the second half.
“It’s just important to me because I’ve been playing with this group of guys for basically my whole life,” Cundiff said. “And they’re kind of like brothers to me. Just having one more game with them, it’s amazing just making it to the state final.”
Henry Clay will meet Louisville Collegiate for the state championship on Saturday at 8 p.m. at Dunbar. Collegiate advanced with a 5-0 win over Daviess County on Thursday.
Cundiff pushed the Blue Devils closer to Saturday’s matchup with a 52nd-minute shot after a smooth dish from senior Lawson Shrensker, giving the Henry Clay fans, who weren’t pleased with the offsides ruling and subsequent takeaway of a goal not long before this one, a 2-0 advantage.
“This program has been through a lot the last couple years,” Messerli said. “So it’s all paying off right now. And on Saturday (in the championship match), we’ll enjoy with our brothers. One last time we’ll be on the field together, so it just means a lot that we made it this far.”
Messerli added each of his two goals in the final 10 minutes of the game, the first a Sam Shapiro-assisted score in the 70th minute, and the second an unassisted goal in the 73rd.
“Got a little lucky there,” Messerli said. “But yeah, it’s good just to kind of close off with a good result. And props to them, they had a great season and they put up a fight to the end, which I think is a testament to how good a small school like that can come out with a lot of passion.”
Henry Clay, a public school in Lexington, boasts an enrollment of 1,995 students. Oneida Baptist, a private institute in Clay County, has 81. The KHSAA does not divide its soccer tournaments into classes the way it does for football. If Oneida Baptist had a football team, which it does not, this would have been a Class 6A vs. Class A matchup in the state semifinals.
“I knew it was going to be a difficult game,” Behler said. “I don’t know that all of them thought that, but once they knew they were in a dogfight, they were up for it. And we grind teams down. When you have possession a lot of the time, other teams get tired, and eventually those spaces open up where you can put balls in the back of the net.”
Collegiate blanks Daviess County
For the first time in program history, Louisville Collegiate (24-2) will play for a KHSAA state title.
The top-ranked Titans took a 1-0 lead over underdog Daviess County (15-7-3) in the first half, when junior Thomas Weinrich found the goal in the 30th minute, but Collegiate really hit its stride in the second half. It took just 10 minutes for sophomore Andrew Caborn to stir up some momentum, hitting a shot nearly 30 yards from the goal to give the Titans a 2-0 lead.
In the 63rd minute, junior Blaise Saufnauer made it 3-0. Bennett MacGregor joined the party in the 70th minute, and Max Shelley also got in on the action in the 79th minute. The Titans ended up with five separate scorers, recording nine shots on goal. Senior goalie Crew Hartlage recorded a pair of saves.
Boys State Soccer Championship
At Paul Laurence Dunbar
SATURDAY’S FINALS
8 p.m.: Louisville Collegiate vs. Henry Clay.
Tickets: gofan.co/app/school/KHSAA.
Streaming: KHSAA.tv or Go.PrepSpin.com (fee associated with each).
