Riders overwhelm O-G to reach district title game
ELIDA — The skies were dry, but it was raining goals.
St. Marys defeated Ottawa-Glandorf 5-1 in a Division II boys soccer district semifinal on Tuesday night.
The match was pushed back a a day due to rain on Monday, with the Roughriders controlling matters for the majority of the contest.
St. Marys had lost to the Titans 2-1 back during the middle of the regular season. Coach Josh Hertenstein said afterward that “this is a completely different team” noting that the Riders were missing multiple starters during that first matchup.
“This is the team we can be,” Hertenstein said. “We tried to ride out the 10 minute wave at the start of each half, then started attacking.”
The Roughriders improve to 13-3-3 on the season. They will face Shawnee on Thursday for the district championship. The Indians are the top seed, and finished 9-0 to win the regular season Western Buckeye League title. On Tuesday, Shawnee edged Kenton 1-0 in the first game of the night.
As for the Roughriders, they got two goals by Wyatt Chapman, with the others from Jack Hertenstein, A.J. Dieringer and Kyle Steininger.
Keeper Cody Ballweg saved three of the four shots on goal by OttawaGlandorf.
As Hertenstein noted, the Titans had the pressure at the start of the first half. They had a couple scoring chances in the early minutes, but couldn’t produce a score.
With almost exactly 10 minutes elapsed, the Riders got their first score on a high arcing shot by Jack Hertenstein to the right corner. It was beyond the reach of Titans keeper Dylan Birkemeier, and got under the crossbar for a 1-0 lead with 30:04 to go.
Precisley three minutes later, at 27:04, junior A.J. Dieringer got the ball at the left edge of the goal box. He spun and fired a quick shot to make it 2-0.
After another shot that went just wide left
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