The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Playoffs beckon
For the first time since 2017, the Bay boys soccer team is entering the postseason with a regular-season loss. Coach Robert Dougherty is hoping it’s the only loss the Rockets suffer all season.
The boys and girls postseason soccer brackets were unveiled Oct. 12, both of which feature a plethora of area teams, some of whom face off against each other.
On the boys side, the Rockets are the highestseeded area team, as they enter the postseason as the No. 1 seed in Division II. They open the playoffs Oct. 24 against the winner of a sectional semifinal between Brookside and Fairview.
“You just prepare for whoever falls in your lap, and that’s what we’ll do,” Dougherty said. “In order to get to the next level, you’ve just got to win. Whoever’s in front of you is the most important game of the year.”
The Rockets’ aforementioned loss came in a 2-0 defeat to Akron Hoban on Oct. 3. The Rockets surrender two goals in the first half and had bad luck in the second, as — along with missing a penalty kick — they had numerous shots bounce off the post and crossbar.
“We had a really good test at Hoban,” Dougherty said. “We didn’t play really well and kind of got beaten up. They were a really big physical team, and instead of trying to outplay them we tried to outmuscle them.
“By the time we figured out how we needed to play,
we’d dug ourselves a 2- 0 hole. They were in our face the whole time and physically tried to knock the daylights out of us. Everything was a little off. After the loss, we took some time to regroup to try to figure out what we needed to do to prevent that from happening.”
Dougherty and the Rockets are not at full strength. After their win against Elyria Catholic on Oct. 7, a Bay player had a family member test positive for the novel coronavirus.
As a precaution, the six players impacted by the test quarantined away from the team, with all their tests coming back negative. The players are eligible to return in the Rockets’ season finale against No. 7 ranked Chagrin Falls on Oct. 17. Oct. 14, the Rockets play Buckeye with a Great Lakes Conference title on the line.
“They became way more coachable after the loss because we saw we have a chink in the armor,” Dougherty said. “We all want to figure out how to prevent it from happening again. When everything’s going your way, it’s really easy to just keep going the way you are because you keep winning, but that’s not always the case. It’s tough to believe in changes
when everything’s going well. Some teams can go undefeated, but it doesn’t happen very often, it’s really rare to see a 21-0 state champion.”
After the aforementioned Fairview-Brookside matchup, the only area teams that are set to face each other are of now are Westlake-Midview (D-I) and Elyria CatholicColumbia (D-III).
So while Olmsted Falls doesn’t have to face off against an area team in its sectional final, chances are the Bulldogs will have to go through some area teams if they want to make a deep playoff run.
If the Bulldogs win their sectional final against Brunswick, they could end up facing off against No. 11 Avon in a district semifinal. Win that, and their reward could be a district final against No. 14 Avon Lake.
“We’re in one of the toughest brackets in the state, but at the same thing I think it’s a very winnable bracket,” Olmsted Falls coach Daniel Zillich said. “We could pick from three brackets, and the top seeds in each of those are Medina, St. Ignatius and Avon. I was trying to stay away from Ignatius and Medina as far as it made sense, and I think our selection made sense.”
The Bulldogs faced off
against Avon on Oct. 7 and lost, 4-1, in a game that was closer than the final score indicated. They play Avon Lake on Oct. 14 in the penultimate game of their season.
“I think on my end it won’t change too much just because we want to get some momentum,” Zillich said of playing Avon Lake so close to the postseason. “They’ll probably see some new wrinkles we have, but they won’t see them all. I know they have a chance at conference title, I think it’ll almost be kind of like a playoff preview. We’re going into it like a normal game; we’re not going to hold anything back.”
On the girls side, the highest-ranked area team is Wellington, which, as the No. 4 seed in D-III, faces off against Columbia in its sectional semifinal. Elyria Catholic is the No. 5 seed in D-III as well.
In Division I, No. 5 Avon Lake and No. 6 Avon are both on the same side of the D-I Northeast V bracket and could end up facing off against each other in a sectional semifinal. The Shoregals will face Magnificat or Cleveland Heights in a sectional final, while the Eagles will go against Westlake or Euclid.
“We’re going to have a really tough road,” Avon coach Attila Csiszar said. “Our bracket is filled with powerhouses, and I think the beautiful things with tournaments is that anyone can win any day. The girls bring it. The teams that you might beat by two or three during the season might change during tournament time.”
The Eagles played one of the toughest regular season schedules in the state, in part so Csiszar could prepare his team for the postseason.
“We put together the toughest schedule that we could possibly put together, and we’ve got some heavy hitters on it,” he said. “For us, we put a great schedule together because we know going into the postseason that it’s going to be tough. And we’re ready. I think we’ve played against some of the best teams in the state.”
Three months ago, Csiszar and other area coaches had no idea if there was going to be a soccer season. Now they’re preparing their teams to try to win it all.
“This is what everyone was hoping for,” Csiszar said. “This season brought a different meaning to the game for the players.”