The top two boys soccer teams in the Mountain State – Woodrow Wilson No. 1 and Wheeling Park No. 2 – have high hopes of playing on the final weekend of the high school soccer season at Paul Cline Stadium in three weeks.
Saturday morning the two titans squared off in the final match of the regular season and as expected, the battle went down to the wire.
After playing to a 1-1 tie in the first half, all-stater Tresz McLeod hit the game winner in the 46th minute to give the Patriots a 2-1 lead that stood for the remainder of the match.
Although he was happy with the win, Wheeling Park head coach Mario Julian knew his team was in a dogfight Saturday, as expected.
“I think of all of the teams we have played, our team, Woodrow and a couple of others are just really good. We have some really good soccer here in West Virginia at the top. It was an exciting game,” Julian said. “They possess the ball really good. They probably do that better than any team that we have played and they slowed our transition down. We have scored a lot of goals this year and we only got two today. We average about four or five, so it was tough sledding out there today.”
The visitors took a quick lead on a goal from Graham Loy in the eight minute and nearly made it stand at the break. However, the Flying Eagles tied the match on a penalty kick from Coby Dillon in the 39th minute.
Woodrow Wilson did an excellent job on McLeod most of the match, but when he was afforded a good chance, the senior striker made the home team pay dearly.
“That was the only time he was free all game,” Julian said. “They did that nice of a job defensively. You see how good (Tresz) is. He is electric. That is his 34th goal on the season.”
Watching McLeod run free was not the optimal situation in the eyes of Woodrow Wilson head coach Steve Laraba to say the least.
“That is not what we look for. We made a mistake before that and that is what allowed him to be in that situation,” Laraba said. “We just have to clean that up. Tresz is a very good player. You give him that chance, he is going to score.”
The Flying Eagles scored in the waning seconds Thursday night to beat Huntington and nearly tied the match in the final seconds when Michael Fayiah got on the end of a nice cross. Unfortunately for Woodrow Wilson, the header was just wide of the left post.
“Michael had a good look and made a great run. He just (barely) missed it. Hagen Hall had one on a free kick that was close as well. He got there just a little late on connecting,” Laraba said. “Wheeling Park is a good team. We made two mistakes and they punished us for them. When you make mistakes against good teams, that’s what happens. On our goal, they made a mistake as well.”
Julian admitted that his heart may have skipped a beat in those final seconds.
“Ten seconds left and they (hit) a great cross and the guy misses it by only a couple of feet,” Julian said. “They have the first goal with 1:16 left in the first half. If we had given them one with under 10 seconds, that would have been difficult. That goes to show you that Woodrow is going to battle you to the end. It is an 80-minute game. In the 79th minute they get a good header.”
With the postseason just a couple of days away, both coaches talked about their takeaways from the solid late season battle.
“Two teams went out there knowing what was at stake. We do have a ranking in the regions now, so the game meant a lot for that,” Julian said. “You had two teams fighting for every inch of the field. This is a big field and there is a lot of space out there, but yet you couldn’t do what you wanted. I do welcome the challenge and Woodrow Wilson is worthy of being considered a top-notch team. They were great.”
“We just played the No. 2 team in the state really well,” Laraba said. “Now we know exactly where the level is and where we have to be in order to reach our final goal. We know we can play with anybody in the state because that was a back and forth game.”
“There is no such thing as a good loss, especially with this group, but we have learned something in this game,” Laraba went on to say. “That is the positive that we can take from it. We want to win every single game that we play. We are disappointed that we lost this game, but we are not thinking we have to redo everything.”
Woodrow Wilson opens sectional play Tuesday at Paul Cline Stadium against the winner of Riverside and Oak Hill. The Warriors and the Red Devils will play Monday.
Wheeling Park opens sectional play against John Marshall Tuesday. A Patriot win will set-up a clash between the winner of AAA No. 5 Morgantown and Brooke.
