Tigers come up short in title game
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| Princeton’s Sam Nelson battles Monmouth-Roseville’s Alberto Cortez for the ball in Tuesday’s regional finals game at Stillman Valley. (BCR photo/Mike Vaughn) |
STILLMAN VALLEY — The Tigers’ season came to an end Tuesday evening, as the top-seeded Titans of Monmouth-Roseville were able to squeak out a 2-1 victory to claim the Stillman Valley regional title.
The contest was a hard fought and close affair throughout all 80 minutes of action.
“It was a good game,” said Princeton coach Jason Bird, “just the way you think a regional championship game is going to be.”
“It’s a game that was evenly matched the whole game, and we just got one through there at the end,” Titans’ coach Aaron Sikorski said.
Sophomore Audelio Ayala provided the scoring for the Titans, notching a pair of goals. His second score came off a pass from Diego Suarez, which put Ayala one-on-one with Tigers’ keeper Nolan Piper. Ayala, in the middle of the box, split the posts with a low kick to give the Titans a 2-1 advantage with 8:37 to play.
“It was a good through-ball from my cousin Diego,” Ayala said. “At this level you don’t have a lot of opportunities, so I wanted to make the most of them.”
Princeton ramped up the intensity following the second Ayala score, and immediately set to work trying to answer.
A sequence near the eight-minute mark saw senior John Zearing drop a corner kick in front of the Titan goal, but the Tigers could not capitalize as the ball was cleared out by the defense, setting up another corner kick from Zearing on the left side.
Zearing’s next kick was nicely placed as well, but Titan keeper Gerardo Ayala jumped and punched the ball out of harms way just in front of the net.
Princeton kept pressing, cheered on by chants of “Lets go Tigers,” from the PHS boosters in attendance, but could not break through the collapsed Titans defense as the clock ticked down.
Jacob Fisher provided the last spark of hope for the Tigers with a shot on goal just under the one-minute mark, but Gerardo Ayala made a nice save to close things out.
“I thought the last 12 minutes, especially, we really put a lot of pressure on them, we just didn’t get the breaks,” said Bird.
Monmouth-Roseville started the scoring in the second period after both teams played to a scoreless draw at intermission.
Audelio Ayala’s first goal came off a short lofted pass from Adrian Amador on a free kick following a Tiger foul. Piper came out to play the ball, but Ayala was able to beat him with a shot that angled from the left side to the right post to put the Titans up 1-0 with 22:02 to play.
Princeton tied things up at one score apiece with 12:32 to play. Reiter Bird drew a foul at the top of the penalty box, setting up senior Scott Roseberg with a free kick.
Roseberg sent a low roller angled just to the right of the Titan wall, assembled in front of him, that beat the keeper, Ayala, to the right post.
“That goal was such a beautiful goal to the short post on the ground,” said Sikorski.
“It was a nice goal,” said Bird. “You feel good when the ball is at his feet late in the game ... he’s going to convert most of the time. He got us back in that game.”
With the loss, the Tigers finish the 2009 soccer campaign with a record of 15-9-2, Monmouth advanced to 14-4-2 and will head on to the Princeton Sectional at the Tiskilwa soccer pitch Thursday to take on Leland/Earlville at 7 p.m.
Notes: The Titans held junior Reiter Bird, who scored three goals in Tuesday’s win over Oregon, without a shot on goal ... Bird finished the season in the team scoring lead with 16 goals, Roseberg notched 15 ... Piper registered seven saves in the net for the Tigers with Ayala notching a pair of saves ... PHS held a 14-7 advantage on shots on goal, and 7-0 advantage on corner kicks ... Seven of Princeton’s nine losses on the season were by one goal.
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