Diego Hoenderkamp had no big expectations of how this day was going to go – or that it would happen at all.
“I honestly didn’t think we’d be here,” he said of his fourth-ranked Ryle Raider soccer team (16-4-2 coming into this game) as it reached the Ninth Region championship Saturday at Covington Catholic.
Then there was the other part of that equation. While many teams consider the postseason as their second season, for CovCath’s Colonels these days, it’s the only season.
“We were always thinking about that, how last year when they came in (to the tournament) with a losing record and they went to the state championship game,” Hoenderkamp said.
And the Colonels were at home, and with a 12-10-1 winning regular season record this year (9-3-0 against region rivals).
But here’s the problem. No matter how much they felt tournament time was their season, the sixth-ranked Colonels had no one to match up with Hoenderkamp, the slim junior Ninth Region MVP, just 5-foot-9 and 130 pounds, but with the skill set his Dutch father has worked with him his entire life to develop.
“My dad was a soccer player,” he said of his early start at the game. It was all natural for him.
All of which became obvious as Diego (his mom is Peruvian, he said, explaining the two heritages in his name) scored the early get-out-in-front goal with 33:31 left in the first half.
Then he assisted on the finisher in the second half on a play he and his buddy, fellow All-Tournament selection Brice Denigan, “work on all the time,” he said, “I knew he was going to make that run.” Which explains how the ball was perfectly placed on time to beat the CovCath defenders who had always seemed to be where they needed to be but couldn’t cut off the sliding Denigan.
Just as Diego knew on the first score that he could beat the CovCath defender to the ball. “I saw the ball in the box,” Hoenderkamp said, “I knew I could make that half turn to the goal . . . I practice that a lot.”
You can see the theme here.
And just like that, Ryle had the 1-0 lead and could play from ahead. “That was big,” Hoenderkamp said. “Our coaches said we needed an early goal,” as he nailed what would have been a game-winner with goalkeeper Landon Barth pitching a shutout with a half-dozen saves.
The regional title earns the Raiders a home state-tournament quarterfinal game Tuesday (at 7 or 7:30 p.m.) against the 10th Region champion Montgomery County, a 5-0 winner over Bishop Brossart Saturday.
“It feels amazing,” said Ryle teammate Cole Marsh, one of four Raiders named All-Tournament. “We lost a few games early but got it together just in time,” he said.
And they don’t want it to end here. When their coaches were going over the state tournament schedule for the next game and the next few days, you could hear a “why not four games?” from the Raider players. The plan here is to go all the way.
For the Colonel Crazies cheering section, who started out with old favorites like “I’m blind, I’m deaf, I want to be a ref,” at a disputed penalty or offsides call – or no call, the themes changed as the game went on. With just 7:30 left in the game after Denigan’s goal, the call was for “a Park Hills miracle” in the face of a 2-0 deficit.
But there would be no miracle. Ryle was just too sound. Too quick. And it looked like the CovCath guys, who had lost at Ryle 3-2 in the regular season, knew it. Which may have been why their coaches were exhorting them “to play to win,” at halftime, “not to play to not lose.”
Easier said than done.
But for a Ryle team with the name “Paul” on their warmups, this has been a labor of love for their departed teammate Lance Paul, a 2021 all-state soccer player and emotional team leader who died suddenly from a brain aneurysm last September during his freshman year at Transylvania.
“Everything is for him,” Marsh said. “We only wish the best for him and his family. He was a big part of this team when he passed.”
NINTH REGION ALL TOURNAMENT TEAM
Hoenderkamp, Marsh, Denigan, and Josh Line, all from Ryle; Mac Tierney, Grey Jordan, and Michael Finn, CovCath; Andrew Kohls and Noah Koenig, Dixie Heights; Chad Gesenhues and Adarsh Khullar, Highlands; Ryan Mullen, Newport Central Catholic; Cosmin Marculeanu, Conner; Braden Fedders, St. Henry; Isaac Cardosi, Beechwood.
