Butler's Tate Mohney, left, celebrates with his brother, Landon, after he scored one of his two goals against Latrobe in a WPIAL Class 4A boys soccer playoff game. Butler defeated Latrobe, 3-0.

BUTLER TWP — Tate Mohney's eyes widened as he saw Latrobe goalkeeper Tanner Sabol sprinting out past the 30-yard line.

Mohney, a senior on the Butler boys soccer team, lofted a perfect shot from 50 yards away. It soared over Sabol's head, took one bounce in front of the goal mouth and rolled into the back of the net for the final score of the night with 18 seconds left.

It was a punctuation mark on a convincing 3-0 win for the Golden Tornado over Latrobe in the first round of the WPIAL 4A playoffs Monday night at Butler High School.

“I have seen him do that a dozen times, I bet, over the years,” said Butler coach Troy Mohney. “He can just put a ball where he wants to most of the time.

“We actually saw film of them and we saw their goalie was very aggressive. So we talked about, 'hey, if you get a chance from far out, take it.' But I didn't expect from that far out.”

Tate Mohney set up his brother, Landon, for Butler's first goal just six minutes into the match.

Midway through the first half, Tate found the net himself with a shot off his left foot for a 2-0 lead.

But the score remained that way until the very end — not from a lack of trying by the Golden Tornado.

Sabol turned away shot after shot from Butler — most off the toe of Tate Mohney — and that made for some anxious times for the Tornado.

Sabol had 14 saves for Latrobe.

“We talked about that at the half — it was 2-0 and Tate actually said, 'Hey, if they get the next one, it's going to be a lot harder than it is now,'” Troy Mohney said. “But I felt like we were in control the entire match.”

Latrobe had two shots on goal in the first 11 minutes. Butler keeper Austin Goepfert turned both away with relative ease.

The Wildcats then went the next 55 minutes before getting off another shot on goal.

“They scored those first two goals on us and we couldn't generate the strong offense that we wanted and that was the difference in the game,” said Latrobe coach Tom Kennedy.

The Wildcats also had a lot of trouble containing Tate Mohney, who could have had seven or eight goals by himself if not for the strong play of Sabol.

“Until you play against him, you just don't know,” Kennedy said. “He's a man among boys out there for most of them and he's bigger than everyone on the team.”

Tate Mohney has been playing soccer since he was 3 and showed off the skills he had acquired during that time — including the 50-yard goal at the end — against Latrobe.

“Tate's a handful. It's hard to contain him,” Troy Mohney said. “No matter what you try to do, he's a very good player, and you saw that tonight.”

Tate said he had a similar long-distance goal against Pine-Richland last year on a free kick, but didn't think it was from that far away.

“It was similar — the goalie was off his line,” Tate said. “I think this one was a little bit farther. It was exciting.”

Tate was more excited , though, about his brother Landon's goal off his crossing pass.

“Those ones are special to me,” Tate said. “I'm hard on him. I yell at him a lot. I'm so proud of him for what he's done this year.”

Butler will play Upper St. Clair Thursday in the next round at a site and time to be determined.