Boys state soccer: Cretin rally falls short in 2A title game
· Yahoo Sports
Cretin-Derham Hall’s path to the Class 2A state championship game hadn’t been easy. Their quarterfinal match went to a shootout. Their semifinal game went to overtime. So it wasn’t surprising that, down 3-0 to Winona in the final, the Raiders were still on the hunt.
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While CDH found success twice in the last 10 minutes, it wouldn’t be able to take the game to overtime. Winona won 3-2 and claimed the state title on Saturday at U.S. Bank Stadium.
After aggressive play on both sides, Winona scored first. In the 17th minute, sophomore Leif Overhaug sent a shot past senior goalkeeper Ben Bajardi. Though the Raiders stayed on offense for the rest of the half, they entered the break down 1-0.
Four minutes into the second half, Winona struck again. Senior Gonzalo Sanchez Navalon scored on a header. A little over 10 minutes later, senior Elijah Jonsgaard found the back of the net, putting the Winhawks up 3-0.
In the 81st minute, CDH got on the board. The Raiders had sped up the pace of the game, and a frantic play allowed senior Alex Waud to get the ball over to Henry Stangler. The senior forward tapped it in.
With under two minutes on the clock, Stangler found a corner kick and knocked it in to score again.
He nearly had another chance, with 53 seconds left, but the header went left.
“It’s very hard to come back from 3-0,” Raiders head coach Russ Turner said. “But they nearly did it in just 15 minutes, which shows what a resilient and determined group they are.”
He believed that once they got one on the board, the tide would turn.
“And it did,” Turner said. “We just ran out of time. Five more minutes, that’s ours in overtime, I think.”
Turner is in his fourth year as head coach, having joined the team at the same time as the group’s 11 seniors. Although the final didn’t present the result he wanted, the second-place finish is the best in school history.
He sees in his team “a collection of guys that are good, good players, who are solid, resilient, passionate, a very coherent set of guys that really love each other, and it’s been great to watch that growth.”
“I can tell you that from the first day of preseason, June 17, I knew we were going for something great,” Turner added.
The Raiders entered the match with matching bleached hair. It’s a tradition on some teams for players to go blonde when the team reaches big milestones.
“I think the special thing for us is everyone did it,” senior Henry Wengelewski said. “I think that kind of shows how tight-knit we are as a team. Once we said, ‘We’re doing this,’ everyone was like, ‘No problem, we’re doing it.’”
This is the first state title in Winona’s history, and its first state appearance ever. It’s also head coach Jacob Teichroew’s first year leading the team.
It’s not his first time working with the group, however.
“When they played in seventh grade and eighth grade,” Teichroew recalled, “I was like, ‘Yup, this is the team. This is the team that’s coming. This is the team that’s gonna push and do great things.’”
He had the championship date, Nov. 7, circled on the team’s calendar from the first day of practice.
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