Boys soccer postseason marks start of new life for Southview's scoreless Lyle

Southview's Jared Lyle reacts to scoring one of his two goals against Anthony Wayne during the D-I soccer regional semifinal Wednesday at Central Catholic.

It's win or go home time in the soc­cer sea­son.

A Southview team with 19 se­niors de­cided to ex­tend its sea­son as the Cou­gars up­set sev­enth-ranked An­thony Wayne 2-1 in a Divi­sion I re­gional semi­fi­nal at Cen­tral Cath­o­lic.

Jared Lyle, who hadn't scored a goal all sea­son, put both of the Cou­gars' goals into the net to hand the Gen­er­als (16-1-2) their only loss of the sea­son.

"We had a goal of com­ing out and do­ing as well as we could," said Lyle, a se­nior. "I had been prac­tic­ing a lot on fin­ish­ing lately, and I just put it through [for goals] this time."

PHOTO GALLERY: Southview upsets Anthony Wayne

Not only did the win ad­vance Southview into a re­gional fi­nal meet­ing with West­lake High School at noon Satur­day at San­dusky High School, it also avenged a 9-3 thrash­ing by AW to end the reg­u­lar sea­son. West­lake beat Medina Wed­nes­day 3-0.

Lyle's sec­ond goal came with just over 28 min­utes left in the sec­ond half to break a 1-1 tie. It gave the Cou­gars (15-3-2) a lead over one of the state's top-ranked teams and clearly a men­tal edge.

De­fen­sively, Southview played steady and seemed more as­ser­tive as the min­utes ticked off the clock.

"There was a lot of se­nior will," said Southview coach Chad Cody, of the Cou­gars. "They didn't want this to be their last 80 min­utes of soc­cer. They wanted to come to prac­tice to­mor­row and they made it hap­pen."

The Gen­er­als went into the con­test rid­ing a four-game win streak since play­ing in a 3-3 tie con­test with St. Frances de Sales on Oct. 6.

AW coach Brian Billings thought the Gen­er­als may have been out­matched by the Cou­gars, play­ing with a sense of ur­gency and a more ex­pe­ri­enced ros­ter.

"They didn't want to go home, yet," Billings said, of Southview. "Un­for­tu­nately we didn't match that in­ten­sity across the field. As a group, they just seemed to want it more. You could see that be­cause they got to the ball faster than we did. They did ev­ery­thing just a lit­tle bet­ter than us."

The last time both NLL teams met a few weeks ago Southview was ahead 3-0 at the half. The Gen­er­als stormed the Cou­gars for a 9-3 come-from-be­hind vic­tory, se­cur­ing the NLL ti­tle. Wed­nes­day’s game was a dif­fer­ent day.

A dozen goals wouldn't be scored. There wouldn't be any come­backs.

It was a post­sea­son matchup with de­fense dic­tat­ing the game's tempo.

AW's An­drew Yo­kum broke a score­less tie when he booted a shot past Southview goalie Eric Breeden from close range with 22:15 re­main­ing in the first half. Nick Frank was cred­ited with an as­sist on the scor­ing play to help AW take the early lead.

But Southview (14-3-2) tied the score ap­prox­i­mately 12 min­utes later when Lyle smashed a free kick from 30 yards out past AW goalie Austin Kamin­ski with 10:45 re­main­ing be­fore half­time. The NLL ri­vals went into the half locked in a 1-1 tie.

Southview's Dan Black­mar came into the con­test lead­ing the Cou­gars with 27 goals. He played just over a half be­fore suf­fer­ing an in­jury that left him watch­ing most of the sec­ond half from the side­line.

Lyle re­sponded by giv­ing the Cou­gars a 2-1 lead when he scored his sec­ond goal with 28:06 re­main­ing in the match.

As for AW, Billings doesn't be­lieve the sea­son-end­ing loss to Southview di­min­ishes the Gen­er­als' win­ning sea­son.

"It was an ex­cel­lent sea­son," Billings said. "At the be­gin­ning of the year, no one ex­pected us to be where we are to­day. We had a great sea­son and un­for­tu­nately this is our first loss and our last game. I can't be any more prouder than I am of the kids."

Ot­tawa Hills knocks off Arch­bold to advance

FINDLAY — Ot­tawa Hills came from be­hind to earn a 2-1 vic­tory over Arch­bold in the Divi­sion III re­gional semi­fi­nal game on Wed­nes­day at Find­lay High School.

Arch­bold scored first, 23 min­utes into the first half, on a goal by Brodie Nofziger. Ot­tawa Hills drew even 37 min­utes into the open­ing half, when Sam Bro­chin scored for the Green Bears.

The score re­mained 1-1 un­til Bro­chin notched his sec­ond goal of the night on a pen­alty kick 29 min­utes into the fi­nal half. Ot­tawa Hills moves on to the re­gional fi­nals on Satur­day.

Con­tact Don­ald Em­mons at: dem­mons@thblade.com 419-724-6302 or on Twit­ter @Dem­monsBlade