Trick or treat? Or maybe a bit of both.
That’s the way it played out for Ryle’s Halloween-ish orange-and-black-clad boys soccer team in the state tournament’s round of 16 Tuesday evening in Union.
The trick was the way the 44-degree windy, chilly weather turned even uglier with some sort of freezing drizzle that showed up in the second half of the Raiders’ back-and-forth struggle with the 15-10 10th Region champion Montgomery County Indians.
The treat came when Raider junior forward/midfielder Josh Line broke open a scoreless tie with a perfectly timed run-through on his own popped-up shot in a crowd of defenders as he pushed into the box. But it didn’t end there with 24:32 left on the game clock.
Line tracked his air ball down to the other side of the scrum of defenders like a shortstop under a pop fly. With the backspin he put on it, Line left it right there for himself before easily tapping it in.
After more than 66 minutes, Ryle had a 1-0 lead. And despite all sorts of close calls at both ends from that point on, that’s the way it ended.
“That was big,” Ryle Coach Stephen Collins said of getting the lead in the weather-impacted game. His Raiders improved to 18-4-2 as they prepare to travel to 12th Region champion Boyle County on Saturday at 7 p.m. in the Elite Eight while Montgomery County is headed back home to Mt. Sterling. Boyle County (19-4-2) routed the outmanned 15th Region champion Johnson Central Golden Eagles (14-8-1), 8-0 in Danville on Tuesday.
Line was motivated, he said, by the Ninth Region coaches not voting him on to the All-Region team. He was taking that run, and that shot, and scoring the ball and no one was stopping him.
“Yeah, oh yeah,” he said of taking, and making, that first – and as it turned out – only goal of the game. He got his shot and was going to make the most of it.
“Josh has been a solid player all year long,” Collins said. “He won the possessions. He got the 50-50 balls.”
And he was fired-up. “If that’s what’s going to motivate him, I’m OK with it,” Collins said although his was a different take. “So the coaches didn’t vote for you, let’s go get a ring.”
That’s what made this one special, Collins – and his players – agreed. The slow start (1-2-2 in the first five games) shouldn’t be held against them, not now anyway.
“I’d say our region is probably the best in the state,” said goalkeeper Landon Barth, after his second straight postseason shutout and fourth in five games.
Just don’t try to credit him with those scoreless results.
“It’s all about the back line,” Barth said, sounding more like a coach, of the defenders in front of him — “not diving, not stopping,” but staying in the play and in front of the ball.
Line wouldn’t have it. “He’s a dog,” Line said using that term as a high compliment for his goalkeeper.
“We tell all the kids this is a team,” Collins said. “This was a really good team game. The defense played a great game.”
And that takes everybody. Especially with a “really young team,” Collins said that headed in a different direction from previous Ryle teams that were “built around defense” like the one that made it to the state semifinals two years ago.
But with offensive stars like junior Diego Hoenderkamp, it was no surprise that the Raiders would become more a team built around its scorers.
Now that they’re getting back to defense, but also with scorers, that “makes us a hard out,” Collins said.
Although in this one, no one except Line ended up as a scoring threat even with shots hitting every part of the goal but the net at both ends. “It could have easily been 3-2,” Collins said.
But for those first sluggish 66 minutes, there seemed more of a chance that a shot would make it into one of the portholes on the Raider pirate ship behind the end zone than into the actual goal.
And then along came Line. And that pop-up he turned into a home run.