Slippery Rock falls, 2-0, to rival Grove City in playoffs
MEADVILLE — Having just watched his 82nd-minute boot climb barely over the Grove City crossbar, Slippery Rock senior midfielder and captain Trent Davey grabbed the collar of his jersey, pulled it toward his face, and bellowed in exasperation.
Down 1-0 to the arch rival Eagles, the Rockets’ leading goal-scorer knew how important an equalizer would’ve been to his team at that juncture of Tuesday night’s District 10 Class 2A boys soccer quarterfinal matchup.
“Just a little bit over,” Davey said. “I had a good first touch and it was just all setting up for that shot. I mean, it looked like it was just dipping down and in, but it just went over. It’s definitely frustrating, but our team gave it all.”
On the other side of the field, less than a minute later, Grove City’s Gage Probst cleaned up his second rebound on the night, adding an insurance marker in a 2-0 win.
“You come so close to tying it up, and the next thing you know, now you’re down two with six minutes to go,” Slippery Rock coach Kyle Hopkins said. “It’s tough. ... Just that quick transition, it kind of killed us there.”
It surely washed away any hopes the Rockets (14-4) had of leaving Meadville’s Barco-Duratz Athletic Complex with a win.
“Coming back on the other end, just them scoring kind of depleted the energy,” Davey said. “We weren’t expected to do much this year, and to have 14 wins was super impressive.”
Grove City (16-2-2) watched as Slippery Rock reeled off five shot attempts in the contest’s initial eight minutes. Nick Olshanski’s 3rd-minute try was poked over by goalkeeper Jonah Stucchio, who also laid out to his left to punch away Zach Lasko’s shot on target just about a minute later.
The Rockets wouldn’t tally another shot attempt in the first half.
“We were definitely getting tired in the midfield and I went down with an injury there (on an awkward attempt to control the ball in the 32nd minute),” Davey said. “That ruined the momentum there. We were trying to attack their one right side and we could never get it there.”
Rockets goalkeeper Josh Book saved a Langdon Ferguson boot in the 35th minute, but Probst was there to tuck it away.
“We talked about it, to make sure we were following,” Hopkins said. “That’s what their striker did — he followed the first one. The second one, we were trying to press up. We were down to 15 minutes, so we were trying to push a guy up. It (was) just kind of fluky, bouncing around.”
Slippery Rock had four shot attempts in the second half, with Davey’s long kick being of the most quality.
“I was pretty confident that if we played the way we could that we could come out with a win,” Eagles coach Jimmy Irani said. “We were a little bit on the back foot starting the game. The first 10 minutes, Slippery Rock had a couple good chances. We kind of found our rhythm.”
Despite the defeat, Hopkins reflected positively on the campaign.
“We have nine first-year letter winners this year,” Hopkins said. “To be able to come back and win the region — with the types of teams we have in our region — was amazing. I just told them to keep their heads up and they can see what we need and what we have to work on moving forward.”
