The Ryle Raiders boys soccer team may have left a lot more sweat on the Dennis Griffin Stadium turf than usual.
But the Raiders also left with plenty of smiles overcoming a number of challenges to defeat the Covington Catholic Colonels, 1-0 in a 9th Region championship rematch of 2022 on Thursday.
The biggest challenge was losing their all-state senior goalkeeper Landon Barth for the second half, who left the game due to being ill. Ssenior Jack Nieman stepped into the spot making five saves in the second half to preserve the win.
“I wasn’t really expecting to go in,” Nieman said. “Landon’s not usually a guy to be sick or get injured. I tried my best. We kept a clean sheet. I couldn’t ask for a better defense than that.”
The Kentucky High School Athletic Association recommends all outdoor games and practices stop if the heat index reaches 105 degrees and above. Schools canceled a number of junior varsity and freshman games this week as a result. But varsity games could mostly be played because they often start at 7:30 or 8 p.m. The start time for this one pushed back to 8 p.m. so it was nothing new to the teams.
“Soccer players run a lot anyway so they’re used to drinking a lot of water and getting a lot of fluids in,” said Stephen Collins, Ryle head coach. “I think both teams did an excellent job with getting players in and out and water in their guys.”
Covington Catholic outshot Ryle, 16-13, spending a lot of time on the attack in the second half. Barth made two saves in the first half and CovCath goalkeeper Auggie Eilerman made eight saves playing the entire game.
“We’re starting to get some pieces there,” Collins said. “For us, it was all about our defense. Once we got our defense worked out and we could start shutting teams down, we know we win any game we’re in. Even though it didn’t look pretty, I thought in the second half, CovCath outplayed us. We were able to play enough defense to hold onto this one.”
Ryle (4-2) has won four in a row after two losses to open the season.
CovCath (4-3-1) fell to 1-3 in 1-0 games. The other two losses came to Louisville powers Trinity and St. Xavier. The lone 1-0 win was the season opener over Conner.
“I always say we learn from each half and we learn from each game,” said Jeremy Robertson, CovCath head coach. “We definitely know we can compete even with our past results. Offensively, we had some open looks. We hit the post one time. We just need to score in the offensive third.”
Ryle has won five in a row in the series, four of them by one goal.
The lone goal came with 21 minutes, 13 seconds left in the first half. Ryle senior midfielder Diego Hoenderkamp drew a penalty in the attacking box and buried the penalty kick for his team-high seventh goal of the season.
CovCath did have a number of chances to equalize it including one with 3:30 left when Nieman slipped with the ball in the box, but Ryle cleared it. The Colonels also had a few corner kicks in that time that Ryle cleared.
CovCath plays at Centerville (Ohio) at 6 p.m. Saturday. Ryle plays at Dixie Heights (3-3-1) on Tuesday at 8 p.m.