Lake’s Ethan Bradfield turns to celebrate after his header off a corner gave the Flyers a 1-0 lead over Liberty-Benton early in the first half of Wednesday’s Division IV regional semifinal. (Nicholas Huenefeld | Sentinel-Tribune)
By Nicholas Huenefeld
Special to the Sentinel-Tribune
TIFFIN — Two late first-half goals opened the floodgates as a shorthanded Lake boys soccer team was defeated 8-1 by Liberty-Benton on Wednesday in a Division IV regional semifinal at Tiffin Columbian’s Frost-Kalnow Stadium.
“With the injuries that we have and the multiple guys that we have that are sick right now, we’ve been trying to fight through stuff,” Lake head coach Brian Reed said.
Liberty-Benton (20-1), which has now won 15 straight, advances to the regional final for the second time in program history. Aiden Hatch led the Eagles with four goals, while Jairo Colina added three. Brice Fox led the way with three assists.
Things started off well for the Flyers, who pushed the ball up field and forced multiple throw-ins in the same sequence, the last of which led to a corner kick just over seven minutes in.
Ethan Bradfield, who had just two prior goals on the campaign, swiftly headed in the pass off the corner from Jonathan Specht to give Lake a 1-0 lead with 32:38 left in the half.
Bradfield’s goal was just the 12th that Liberty-Benton has given up all year. Half of the wins this year for the Eagles have come via shutout, including seven since their only loss on Sept. 3.
Less than two minutes later, Liberty-Benton had a goal waived off, but they didn’t take much longer to tie it up. With 28:49 remaining, Lake’s Mitchell Maguire made one of his nine saves, but the Eagles cashed in a second-chance opportunity to tie the game at one apiece.
In the 15th minute, Specht had a shot saved on the second of back-to-back corners for Lake, and Travis Merrill’s deep throw-in was saved in goal by Liberty-Benton in the 21st minute.
Liberty-Benton then had a free kick deflected away and a pair of shots go high in the next few minutes before scoring the go-ahead goal with 6:26 left.
On the ensuing kickoff, Lake’s Greyson Reed nearly tied the game as his deep shot went over the keeper, but bounced off the crossbar and down before it was saved.
Exactly two minutes later, Liberty-Benton took a two-goal lead, and the Flyers couldn’t recover.
“We have a very light bench,” Reed said. “To expect these guys to play 80 minutes at 100 percent wasn’t even in the cards.”
The Eagles scored one minute into the second half and added another with 34:52 left. In total, they registered 19 shots in the final 40 minutes, including 12 on goal.
In the second half, Lake had three shots, but none on frame – a high free kick from Reed with 29:44 left, a wide attempt from Merrill with 13:50 remaining and another wide attempt from Reed in the game’s 67th minute.
One of the positives for Lake was the return of Preston Snyder, who hadn’t seen action since an injury in early September.
“It was great,” Reed said. “I love that kid. To see him back out on the field and that we held on long enough to get him back was nice. He still has a road ahead of him. Hopefully he can get himself healthy again and have a great basketball season.”
The Flyers (15-3-2) concluded a historic season, which included the program’s first district championship since 2008 and just its second all-time regional tournament appearance.
“That was one of the things that we wanted to get done,” Reed said. “Obviously the league didn’t work out for us, but we put that little checkmark next to the district box, which was nice to see since it hasn’t happened in so many years.”
