DAYTON — Preble Shawnee battled No. 3 seed Greeneview for 110 minutes over two days, but eventually fell in penalty kicks to the Rams 3-2 in a girls Division III district semifinal soccer match on Tuesday, Oct. 22 at The Miami Valley School.
“It’s crap shoot and they made one more than we did,” Shawnee coach Jeff Stiver said. “You’d rather it be decided out here (on the field), but I guess sometimes games would go forever if they didn’t do this.”
The Arrows forced overtime on the first night of action with six seconds remaining when senior Cami Hollon took a through ball and beat the Greeneview keeper for a goal to tie the contest at 1-1.
After 15 minutes of overtime, and neither team scoring, the match was suspended due to darkness as the Southwest District Board opted to have the match played at a location without lights.
When play resumed on Tuesday neither team scored in the remaining 15 minutes of overtime thus sending the match to penalty kicks to decide the winner.
The Arrows missed their first three attempts and fell behind 2-0.
In the fourth round, freshman Casey Lyon cut the Arrows deficit to 2-1 and after senior keeper Abby Elam fended off a Greeneview attempt, Shawnee had a chance to tie.
Elam calmly stepped up and nailed her attempt to tie the match at 2-2, but the Rams final shooter blasted a shot into the lower left corner of the net to end the Arrows season.
Stiver said his team exceeded his expectations.
“I thought it was a great season,” he said. “I don’t think anybody expected us to win more than eight games and we were a PK away from going to the district final again, which nobody probably fathomed. Me included. It’s not the most talented group (I’ve had) but they love each other and they play hard for each other. It’s just a hard working group and it’s not always pretty, but they just keep playing. All you can ask if you lack (a lot) of talent sometime heart, guts and will make up for some things.”
Stiver said he would have preferred to finish the contest on Monday, especially since he felt his team had the momentum after scoring late.
“Number one, it’s a terrible set up. The Southwest District Board should never allow somebody to host a game at 5 o’clock. If they’re going to host at five go to a stadium that has lights and is playing one at seven and if the first one goes over then maybe the second one starts at 7:30,” he said. “It’s bad for everybody, don’t get me wrong. But you could come back today and the conditions would be different. You know which direction you’re going to go. It’s just not a good situation. They should certainly look at it. I don’t like it. Every game last night was finished except ours and it wasn’t because of rain. The field is great. It’s the biggest field in the area.”
“Last night at the end of that game we were on a high,” he continued. “We scored with six seconds to go and they (Greeneview) are down. Now, all of a sudden we come back today and it’s a whole different day. They’re mindset’s different. Our mindset’s different. It changes everything.”
Shawnee, the No. 8 seed, will lose 11 senior of this team, which finished with an 11-7 record and was second in the Southwestern Buckeye League Buckeye Division.
“I feel bad for all of them,” Stiver said. “We did some things better than what I think they thought we would. It’s a fun group with a lot of personalities. All of 11 of those girls will be sorely missed. They’re all just fantastic kids.”
