White Hawk Down
Holy Family Boys Varsity Soccer Team
The vision of the Mound Westonka mens soccer team celebrating a win to advance to the section final game is a vision that the Holy Family mens soccer team has not forgotten. The bitter taste of defeat still fresh in their mouth as they have patiently waited for a rematch against the White Hawks. The Fire finally got a chance to right the wrongs of last season on Tuesday night, under the lights with a big crowd out cheering them on. The team did not let down: they put on quite a show for all in attendance.
The game began just after 7 p.m. as the sun was setting over “the hill”. The Fire came out to a hot start applying great pressure and winning the possession battle. The White Hawks managed to last just seventeen minutes before the fire gained their first lead of the night when Ben Creager broke the ice with an unassisted goal. However, Ben was not satisfied with just one goal. Just a minute later, Ben streaked toward the net and nearly scored his second goal. The Fire stayed in command until the twentieth minute when a controversial call gave Mound Westonka a penalty kick, and moments later a tie game. However, Fire captain Luke Puklich, and his fellow teammates did not drop their heads. With ten minutes left in the half, Luke delivered a strike to the corner of the net that trickled by the goalie for a Fire lead. With great understanding that there was plenty of game left to be played, the Fire kept applying the pressure when Dan Parker received a great cross-field pass in front of the net from Joe Fasching, nearly scoring the third goal of the night on a tremendous effort using his head. The nightmare first half for the White Hawks continued when Ben Creager netted his second goal of the night giving the Fire a 3-1 lead.
Holy Family came out in the second half and won the possession battle again, despite scoring no goals through the first thirty-five minutes. An overlooked star of the second half was junior goalie Bryce Richter. Thanks to the great defense in front of him including seniors Sawyer Schugel and Zyler Niece, Bryce did not have a big workload on this night; however, he made a few very nice saves when he needed to put an end to any sort of scoring threat by the White Hawks. Finally, with five minutes remaining in the game, Bishop Schugel broke ahead of his defender in a footrace, and buried a dagger to seal the game. A true team effort with contributions from up and down the roster.
The sweet revenge the Fire have been craving was finally quenched. In fact, when star of the game Ben Creager was asked how it felt to score two goals against the team that knocked them out of sections last year, he responded immediately and with great excitement saying “Revengeful… is that a word? Well it felt good”. He went on to say that they were able to win the game because the team “stuck to [their] game plan no matter what the other team did”. A great game from Ben Creager and his teammates has fans excited for their next game this Wednesday September 12, at Southwest Christian High School. To cap off a great night for Fire soccer fans, Joe Fasching, a former Mound Westonka soccer player, shared how it felt to beat his old team: “It is good to get the men of fall to 4-1, and end their win streak of 4 games. Overall it feels amazing”. With the win over the White Hawks the Fire move to 4-1-1 with great momentum and high hopes for the rest of the season.
