The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Avon Lake holds off Copley for victory
The host Shoremen held Copley scoreless in the second half to win their Division I district semifinal. Henry Palattella has the story.
In the final moments of Avon Lake’s district seminal against Copley, Avon Lake coach Pete Klepek was calm. Even with Copley’s talented forwards mounting attack after attack against his defense, Klepek stayed even keeled on the sideline.
For some coaches, the thought of having to hold down Copley’s front line is ulcer inducing. For Klepek, it was just another day at the office.
The Shoremen front line held, holding Copley scoreless in the second half for a 2-1 win Oct. 28. The Shoremen punched their ticket to the district final against Brunswick on Oct. 31.
“At halftime we talked about how they’re not going to stop coming,” Klepek said. “An ugly win’s a win. I’d say out of our 15 wins we won possession in about 13 of them. We adapted to what we had to do and understood what we needed to do to win.”
Klepek’s night of adjustments started early. After the opening whistle, Klepek noticed Copley playing their defense up farther up than normal.
The Shoremen made Copley pay for that decision minutes into the match when Logan Allemerier sent a long ball into the heart of the Indians’ defense. From there, Nathan Summerfield took over, as the junior burst through the back line. As the Copley defenders panicked, Summerfield put a shot on goal that hit off a defender and went into the net.
“It’s always good to get a team on their heels in the beginning,” Summerfield said. “We didn’t know the overtop balls would work as easily as they did but once it did, we just kept going back to it.”
A little while after that, it was Copley’s turn to take advantage of a misplay. In the 21st minute, Grant Link hit a screamer that hit off the crossbar and bounced back into play. After a miscommunication between two Avon Lake defenders, Anthony Womer rif led a shot into goal from close range to knot the score at 1-1
hat score was shortlived. Six minutes after Womer’s goal, Avon Lake sent up for a corner kick. While the initial corner went long, Cullen Reutter headed the ball back into play to Allemeier who finished the play off with a goal.
“We made sure not to panic after they got their
goal,” Allemeier said. “We wanted to put another one in. They were bringing it to us, but we were able to stay composed.”
This set the stage for the final 10 minutes. Klepek dropped both his center midfielders back to defend, which led to Copley getting a chance to establish its attack in the
midfield. But the Shoremen defense held strong, knocking away every opportunity.
“We’ve been a second half team for most of the year but that first goal gave us confidence,” Klepek said. “They’re a quality team, they’ve got some Division I players and we still could’ve put a couple more away.
When they started playing a high line they didn’t adjust to it so we decided to play the ball over top. We had more chances because of it.”
Klepek jokingly referred to Avon’s bracket as the ‘blood bracket’ because of the quality of opponents in it. Now the Shoremen are one win away from win
ning the district. They’ll face Brunswick at Avon Lake. The Blue Devils defeated Avon, 1- 0, in overtime Oct. 28.
“If we want to be the best, we’ve got to play the best,” Klepek said. “No matter what happened tonight we played a quality opponent and luckily for us we came out victorious.”