Cashing In
JACKSON TWP — Sometimes it’s just the way the ball bounces.
That was the case Thursday night — in the most literal sense.
The ball found its way off the hand of Butler junior Thomas Sheptak nearly six minutes into the overtime period, setting into motion a Tyler Prex penalty kick that decided matters in a 3-2 Seneca Valley boys soccer win.
“You hate kind of either winning or losing that way,” Raiders (4-0, 2-0) coach George Williams said. “Obviously, we’ll take the win. But, we’d like to have won it in the course of play.”
More so than being down about a hard-fought Section 1-4A loss, Golden Tornado (2-1-1, 1-1-0) coach Troy Mohney focused first on consoling his distraught player, a victim of bad luck under the lights at NexTier Stadium.
“I just gave Thomas a hug,” Mohney said. “You feel bad for him. He plays soccer all year long, and he loves it. He’s got a passion for it. It’s just unfortunate that it bounced up and hit his hand.”
In the 85th minute, Prex’s boot dribbled to left past Butler goalkeeper Drew Knight for the victory.
“I just knew we needed someone to step up,” said Prex. “I’ve done it before for my club team, so I asked the guys. We all decided if I was confident, I’d go ahead and take it.”
Early on — for much of the first 40 minutes, actually — the visiting Golden Tornado seemed to have had Seneca Valley’s number. Yet, missed opportunities on a bevy of set piece chances would come back to bite them.
“We absolutely started on the front foot there for a large portion of that first half,” Mohney said. “Unfortunately, they caught us on the counterattack and scored a goal, so even though we had the better of the play there at the beginning, they were still winning, 1-0.
“We need to continue to do some of those things that were allowing us to play on the front foot, but we need to finish.”
Raiders senior Cole Kamarec opened the scoring in the 8th minute on a crossing pass from Tyler Holloway. Butler answered 13 minutes later when senior Cody Lubinsky scored the first of his two markers on the night. The other was a second-half response to Zachary Garma’s score with just under 13 minutes to play in the first.
“They won a lot of the 1v1 battles early on,” Williams said. “They were beating us to the ball, they were winning a lot of those tackles, and that’s why they found that early success.”
The coach of the defending state champions wasn’t surprised to see such an effort from his side’s opponents, though.
“They were our only tie last year,” Williams said. “So, we knew this was going to be a really good team — and it was. They’re a really quality group. … We got lucky a couple times.
“That’s a strong group that’s walking away mad and is going to come back even harder at us next time.”
As Williams alluded to, the two teams will meet again, this time at the Golden Tornado’s place on Sept. 26.
“There’s no extra motivation needed for Seneca Valley,” Mohney said. “Seneca Valley, they’re the team to beat right now. We were close today, but it didn’t happen.”
Seneca Valley has now won two straight to open section play. It narrowly beat Fox Chapel on Tuesday.
“We’ve been very spoiled for a while now,” Williams said. “We’ve been in a position of having, just, unbelievable teams. I think this team is also extremely talented, but we’re a little bit young, a little bit inexperienced. So, we’re working on getting that experience.
“To be able to come out of games like tonight … and still be successful is very fortunate.”
