ANDERSON — Soccer is a sport that is strategy intensive. Saturday, two of those coaching decisions played out to give Anderson a 2-0 win over Highland and the title in its own boys sectional.
The Indians (11-4) will travel to Blackford on Wednesday evening for the high school regional there, to face either the host Bruins or Jay County. Match time is 7:30 p.m. Highland ends its season 8-5-3.
In the championship match, Anderson scored in the 17th minute on a goal by senior midfielder Justin Safford.
“I just crashed the far post, and Andrew Gray gave me a cross, and I put it in,” Safford said.
“We missed a mark at the far bar,” Highland coach Chris Spolyar said.
That early goal played right into one of Highland’s strategies. “When they play bunker in the back, they look for one goal and they got it,” Spolyar said. “They play on this narrow field, and they know how to make it work. We just couldn’t find any spaces.”
The second of the two AHS strategies was in place from the start of the match, and it centered on Highland senior Ruben Oliva.
“Ruben is a phenomenal player,” Anderson coach James Kempson said. “He was a part of all of their goals against Yorktown (in the Thursday semifinal). We wanted to take him away and see if Highland could beat us without him.”
With Oliva effectively marked with two or three players for most of the match and ahead 1-0, the strategies worked in perfect harmony to yield mostly just a handful of half chances.
At halftime, the 1-0 lead was still on the board.
At minute 62, the Tribe nearly took a 2-0 lead when Patrick Freeman fired a rocket from about 25 yards out, but the ball hit the crossbar and bounded away.
Five minutes later, Anderson had an even better chance when William Dorff took a penalty kick. But the kick was saved by Highland’s keeper, Taylor Faivor. The rebound came back to Dorff, but he failed to make solid contact, and Faivor rolled up the ball securely this time.
“I was afraid we’d give up the momentum after the missed penalty kick,” Kempson said. “But we fought through some chances they had.”
It took just over 30 seconds for Oliva to finally get a good shot, this time on a free kick from just a few yards outside the box, but AHS keeper Matt Gray made an outstanding stop to preserve the shutout.
For the next 18 minutes, neither side got a great chance to score. It was a nervous time.
“Every minute was torture,” Safford said.
With just over five minutes remaining, the pressure lifted when sophomore forward Deny DeLeon lined up a rebound and put it past Faivor. The rebound came off a shot by Jose Librado, which hit the far post.
“We had switched to a 3-5-2 in the final eight minutes because we were still behind,” Spolyar said. “If we’d been in our normal 4-4-2, they probably wouldn’t have gotten that. It was a backbreaker.”
Gray had two saves in goal for the Indians and Faivor had five in goal for the Scots.
“This was a tough battle for both teams,” Kempson said. “It was just a matter of who could finish their opportunities. We’re beat up right now, and I’m proud of them that they could bounce back after that loss last Saturday for the North Central Conference championship.”
Highland has eight seniors on its sectional roster but was playing a lot of underclassmen through much of the match.
“We knew this would be a tough game,” Spolyar said. “They beat us 3-1 during the regular season. They just had our number this year.”
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