Shutout moves Perrysburg girls to regional soccer final

Beth Glowacki, second to the left, celebrates with her teammates after scoring their second goal against the Anthony Wayne on Wednesday night in Bowling Green.

BOWLING GREEN — On a soggy and bit­ter-cold Hal­low­een eve­ning — when count­less young­sters donned myr­iad cos­tumes for trick-or-treat treks through neigh­bor­hoods else­where — Per­rys­burg se­nior Maddy Wil­liams ar­rived at Cochrane Sta­dium dis­guised as a blonde ver­sion of Mia Hamm.

Or, so it seemed to the An­thony Wayne Gen­er­als, who watched as Wil­liams surged and cut and wove her way through seem­ingly help­less de­fend­ers to lead her Yel­low Jack­ets to a 3-0 vic­tory Wed­nes­day night in a Divi­sion I girls re­gional soc­cer semi­fi­nal.

PHOTO GALLERY: Perrysburg stays perfect

Wil­liams scored her 45th goal of the sea­son, as­sisted on the Jack­ets’ other two goals, and came inches from add­ing three or four more tal­lies as top-ranked Per­rys­burg moved to 20-0-0 on the sea­son while out­scor­ing its op­po­si­tion 103-5.

“We just had to come out re­ally hard and had to stay fo­cused,” Wil­liams said. “It means a lot. It wasn’t just 1-0 with a fluke goal. We came out hard and scored three.

“I don’t think we’ve played our best soc­cer yet, and we ha­ven’t lost yet. So, that’s a good sign. I’m re­ally proud of this team.”

An­thony Wayne, which kept the ex­plo­sive Yel­low Jack­ets off the score­board for much of the first half, fin­ished its sea­son at 12-3-4.

Per­rys­burg ad­vances to meet the win­ner of to­day’s re­gional semi­fi­nal be­tween West­lake and ninth-ranked Medina. The re­gional fi­nal will be played at 3 p.m. on Satur­day at a site to be de­ter­mined.

The open­ing 23 min­utes of this match were like a dam on the brink of burst­ing, as Per­rys­burg con­trolled pos­ses­sion in the Gen­er­als’ zone al­most con­tin­u­ously.

Three times Wil­liams tested AW ju­nior goal­keeper Tay­lor Hill, and three times Hill an­swered with saves. A fourth time, a Wil­liams shot sailed just above the cross­bar.

That dam fi­nally gave way in the 24th minute, when Wil­liams took a pass from Sarah Quimby, turned, and zipped a left-footed shot into the goal from 15 yards out on the side.

“It was frus­trat­ing,” Wil­liams said of the ear­lier missed chances. “But, like my club coach tells me, you’re prob­a­bly only go­ing to score one goal out of ev­ery 15 times you try, so I knew I had to keep try­ing.

“Finally I got one, and it was great. With our team, once we score a goal, we know it’s our game, and we can con­trol it.”

The goal con­tin­ued a re­mark­able streak for the Pur­due-bound Wil­liams, who has scored at least one goal in all 20 of Per­rys­burg’s matches this sea­son.

“Their keeper [Hill] did a great job and made some ex­cel­lent saves,” Per­rys­burg co-head coach Mar­ga­ret Ber­nard said. “But, I was con­fi­dent. We were pos­sess­ing well, and it was just kind of a mat­ter of time be­fore we’d get one in.”

The Per­rys­burg at­tack didn’t take long to con­vert on an­other op­por­tu­nity.

This time, in the 29th minute, it was Wil­liams feed­ing fresh­man for­ward Beth Glow­acki, who sent a left-footer 15 yards for a goal and a 2-0 Yel­low Jack­ets lead.

Wil­liams’ most im­pres­sive se­quence of the match cre­ated Per­ry­burg’s third goal.

She raced to­ward the end line to chase down a free ball, side­stepped a Gen­er­als de­fender, stopped the ball be­fore it went out of bounds, and sent a per­fect feed to ju­nior team­mate Lucy Wal­ton.

Wal­ton banged in the goal from seven yards out in the 51st minute for a 3-0 lead.

“It was a beau­ti­ful pass from Maddy, and I was right there at the right time,” Wal­ton said. “Maddy’s just awe­some, ba­si­cally. I’m ex­cited [with the win] and I think we all are. We hope to con­tinue on.”

Wil­liams’ as­sists were her 15th and 16th of the sea­son.

Per­rys­burg se­nior goal­keeper Chloe Buehler needed to make just four saves. The most ten­u­ous mo­ment of her shut­out ef­fort came in the 62nd minute, when AW had a cou­ple prime scor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties from left of the goal.

“We were a very com­posed,” Per­rys­burg other co-head coach, Jorge Diaz, said. “We had three goals and we dom­i­nated the play. All three phases of the game, we re­ally con­trolled.”

AW’s Hill had 10 saves, as Per­rys­burg sent 13 of its 27 to­tal shots on goal.

“We knew they were go­ing to come at us, and they’re ob­vi­ously a fan­tas­tic team,” Gen­er­als coach Lori Wil­liams said of Per­rys­burg. “They’re com­plete, and they knocked the ball around pretty well.

“I’m tre­men­dously please with our girls. I thought they played very hard. Our plan was to at­tack, and I we didn’t at­tack as much as I would’ve liked. But un­for­tu­nately we weren’t the best team on the field to­night.”

St. Ur­sula moves on with win over Akron Hoban

SANDUSKY — In a Divi­sion II re­gional semi­fi­nal, St. Ur­sula took a step closer to reach­ing the state fi­nal four for the sec­ond straight sea­son with a 1-0 win over Akron Arch­bishop Hoban.

Jor­dyn Greer scored three min­utes into the sec­ond half for the lone goal of the game played in wet con­di­tions at San­dusky High School.

The Ar­rows out­shot Akron Hoban 7-4 as goal­keeper Syd­ney Yeager posted the shut­out.

PHOTO GALLERY: St. Ursula wins regional semi

Nei­ther team had a lot of shots in first half as play was a bit dis­jointed with no sus­tain pres­sure by ei­ther side.

St. Ur­sula coach Chris Black said his team set­tled in dur­ing the sec­ond part of the first half.

“Then in the sec­ond half we ac­cel­er­ated and got a lot more chances,” Black said.

Arch­bishop Hoban (14-5-1) had to press in the sec­ond half.

“We had a lot of qual­ity op­por­tu­ni­ties late but we did not cap­i­tal­ize,” Black said.

Greer, a fresh­man, scored both goals in a 2-0 win over Bowl­ing Green in the dis­trict fi­nal last Satur­day. She also scored one in the dis­trict semi­fi­nals.

Un­ranked St. Ur­sula (12-5-3) ad­vances to face No. 9-ranked Bellville Clear Fork (18-2-0) in the re­gional fi­nal on Satur­day at site and time to be de­ter­mined.

The Ar­rows knocked off Clear Fork 5-2 in the re­gional fi­nal last year to earn the pro­gram's first trip to the fi­nal four. St. Ur­sula lost in the state ti­tle game 2-0 to Co­lum­bus DeSales.

Black lost 13 let­ter­win­ners off of that team but e said the Ar­rows played a dif­fi­cult sched­ule to pre­pare for the post­sea­son.

“We have con­fi­dence,” Black said. “We have hun­gry kids.”

Con­tact Steve Junga at: sjunga@the­blade.com, 419-724-6461 or on Twit­ter@Jun­gaBlade.