BW nips Blue Aces 2-1 in OT, advance to DII District finals

News Staff Reports

In what turned out to be a bat­tle in almost every sense of the word, Big Wal­nut out­lasted vis­it­ing Granville in a Divi­sion II Dis­trict semi­fi­nal Tues­day in Sun­bury, notch­ing a 2–1 over­time win.

With the score knot­ted 1-all after 80 min­utes of phys­i­cal play, Golden Eagle mid­fielder Adam Car­ifa finally ended things five min­utes into the extra ses­sion. Junior mid­fielder Nick Her­bert sent a ball over the top of Granville’s back line and, when Car­ifa caught up to it, the sopho­more ham­mered a vol­ley from just out­side the box and into the back of the net.

The tally ended a game that saw four play­ers exit early with cards — two for Big Wal­nut and another two for Granville.

“I’m still in shock,” Golden Eagle head coach Brett Weiss said after the con­test. “Nei­ther myself nor the Granville coach wanted our seniors to go out that way, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t really proud of our guys … they did a lot of grow­ing up tonight.”

After con­trol­ling things at the start, Big Wal­nut, the No. 7 seed, saw ninth-seeded Granville score the game’s first goal after a cross eluded a slew of Golden Eagle defend­ers before being sent into the goal 10 min­utes into the action.

Big Wal­nut got even eight min­utes later, though. After an Eagle cor­ner kick resulted in a near miss, Sopho­more mid­fielder Noah Gib­son col­lected the clear­ance and fired a shot from 30 yards away — a shot that knuck­led a bit before slip­ping past the Granville goalie.

The two teams traded blows for the rest of the half and the entire sec­ond half before, with just nine play­ers on the field per side, Car­ifa sent the Golden Eagles into Saturday’s dis­trict final.

BIG WALNUT 6, HAMILTON TWP. 1 —To say Big Walnut’s Austin Foor is on a tear would be an understatement.

The Golden Eagles’ senior for­ward stole the show last Thurs­day (Octo­ber 18) night, scor­ing five goals to lift seventh-seeded Big Wal­nut to a 6–1 Cen­tral Dis­trict Divi­sion II Sec­tional final deci­sion over host Hamil­ton Township.

Foor scored three of his goals in the first half, giv­ing Big Wal­nut a 3–1 edge at the break. He came back to score two in the sec­ond half. Sopho­more mid­fielder Adam Car­ifa also scored in the final half for the 5-goal mar­gin of vic­tory over the sixth-seeded Rangers.

Foor, with 9 goals in two post­sea­son out­ings, picked up where he left off last Tues­day (Octo­ber 16) night when he scored four goals to lead the Golden Eagles to a 5–1 Divi­sion II Cen­tral Dis­trict Sec­tional Semi­fi­nal vic­tory over vis­it­ing White­hall at Golden Eagle Soc­cer Stadium.

Big Wal­nut will play the win­ner of the second-seeded Wat­ter­son and tenth-seeded Lick­ing Hgts. win­ner Sat­ur­day at 4 p.m. at West­er­ville Cen­tral for a Dis­trict title.

Posted by Gary Henery on Oct 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.