CLAYTON — In the opening round of the boys Southwest 4 Division I sectional tournament Tuesday night, No. 11 seed Miamisburg posted a 4-2 victory over No. 4 seed Northmont.

The Vikings took a 1-0 first half lead on a goal by senior defender David Risner.

When play resumed in the second half the Vikings came out playing aggressively and scored in less than a minute. Senior forward Keegan Pickering found the back of the net with 39:03 remaining to make it 2-0.

Senior midfielder Deaton Shade scored what proved to be the winning goal two minutes and 18 seconds later to boost Miamisburg’s lead to 3-0.

Northmont missed a direct kick at 34:05 and a Miamisburg shot glanced off and over the crossbar at 26:50. At the 23:59 mark the Thunderbolts missed shot from inside the goal box that sailed high and over the net.

With 18:34 left goalkeeper Alex Hardy smothered a Miamisburg shot.

Northmont finally scored when Elliott Moyer looped a kick into goal box that Julian Bazile hammered into the net to make it 3-1.

The Vikings missed a shot wide left less than two minutes later.

The Thunderbolts pulled to within a goal when Moyer launched a corner kick that Nevin Smith headed into the net at 9:37 to make it a 3-2 game.

Northmont made a defensive error when a ball was kicked past midfield toward goal. A player failed to clear the kick or send it to the goalkeeper apparently unaware a Miamisburg player was racing up from behind.

Keegan Pickering flew past the defender as goalkeeper Alex Hardy came out to defend. Pickering snapped off a kick that sailed past Hardy and into the net with 8:49 left. That goal sealed Northmont’s fate.

The Thunderbolts were unable to mount any serious scoring threats for the remainder of the game.

The Vikings intercepted a Northmont pass 30 yards from the goal with 1:24 left and launched a shot that sailed just over the crossbar.

With the victory Miamisburg improved to 5-9-2 while Northmont concludes play at 11-6-0. The Vikings advance to face Monroe on Saturday at Monroe High School.

“We made some bad mistakes,” said Northmont coach Bob Brown. “I’m not saying that Miamisburg didn’t play well because they did. They had a good game plan coming in, but it’s frustrating when we talked about stuff all week long about following man and all that other stuff and we just didn’t.

“To make critical errors at the wrong time, especially when you get back into the game… watching us shoot ourselves in the foot just gets old,” Brown said. “On the last goal we made a really bad decision. He should have played the ball back to the keeper and the ball would have been out. I don’t know what he saw so I don’t have any answer for it that makes any sense.

“Like I said, I’m not taking anything away from what they did but we literally gave them every goal they had. Kudos to them and I hope they do well on Saturday,” Brown added.