A tie

This afternoon the St. Anthony Bulldog soccer team played a match against the Carlyle Indians, at Carlyle.

Craig, one of our senior players, who also blogs over at Argyle socs n' mocs, wrote an article for the Effingham Daily News:

The County fairgrounds saw one more dog fight this Tuesday evening, as the St. Anthony Bulldogs and Carlyle Indians varsity soccer teams viciously battled to a tie. With seventeen and nine shots on goal respectively, the two teams played a fairly balanced game. Each team did seem to dominate their fair share, though.

The Bulldogs succeeded on three of those seventeen shots, two of which were scored in the second half. The first half was held by the Bulldogs as they took the lead in about the middle of the half, as Riley Westendorf managed to put the ball in the back of the net unassisted. Carlyle failed to score in the first half.

The second half succeeded in mixing up the action. Five of the six goals were scored, and the Indians showed some reignited flames. Michael Kabbes blasted a ball into the goal off of a pass from Evan Hakman. Brett Haarmann followed that success with his own goal prompted by a corner kick taken by Charles McGuire. After these two goals, the Bulldogs took the largest lead they’ve had for the season.

St. Anthony’s varsity goalkeeper, Cody Sandschaefer, allowed three goals from the opposing team, all of which were in the second half. The third and final goal, which brought the tally to a tie, was scored off of a penalty kick called on Craig Brummer in the far corner of the box. The call raised some eyebrows, and some voices, but the team played on.

Emotions ran high as the game came to an end, and the final whistle caused some despair. Coach Shane Nelson commented on the outcome of the game. “We played well as a team. It’s nice to see a young team put forth such effort game after game. We had more shots on goals than any other game, and more goals than the rest of our season combined.” Ten of Carlyle’s fourteen team members were first-year players.

The paper has not published the first two articles he wrote (which he hasn't posted on his blog); we'll see if they publish this one, or at the very least offer him tips to have future articles published.