Tigers do away with Belleville West in regional boys soccer semifinals

EDWARDSVILLE - The Edwardsville Tigers playoff campaign started with a comfortable 6-0 victory over the Belleville West Maroons in the Class 3A O’Fallon Regional Semifinals on Tuesday night at O’Fallon Township High School.

The No. 1-seeded Tigers improve to 10-2-3 and advance to play the host Panthers on Friday at 5 p.m. for the regional championship.

The No. 8 seeded Maroons ended their season at 1-19.

One week ago, Edwardsville came to Belleville West and handed the Maroons 7-0 blowout in their final regular season game. Fast-forward to last night and the Tigers struggled to find the opening goal a bit longer than expected.

“That’s completely fine. With things being the way they are it’s a matter of just chipping away, and then goals eventually do come,” Edwardsville head coach Mark Heiderscheid said. “For us, it was important to be patient, let the goals come where they may. Look at it of a training session way how to break down something that was well organized.”

Ultimately, striker Bryce Glisson found the back of the net in the 17th minute. Nine minutes later, Jacob Doyle got in behind the Maroons back four and toe-poked the ball past goalkeeper Evan Parker to put the Tigers up 2-0 going into halftime.

Just short of nine minutes into the second half, Edwardsville scored in bunches during a short span of time.

Ethan Miracle tallied two goals in less than minutes. His second was a sublime left-footed volley outside of the 18-yard box that curled over the keeper into the top corner of the far the post. Miracle has now scored 17 goals in 15 games for Edwardsville.

“[Ethan’s] a guy who eventually knows he’s going to shoot one and it is going to go in,” Heiderscheid said. “He gets a number of shots off, and you think “is he ever going to get one away from the keeper?” Then he hits one that’s a highlight reel. He’s hit several that are like, “are you kidding me?”

“He’s one of several players that can lead us in games. That’s what you need come playoffs,” Heiderscheid said. “You want to have a good team. You want to have possession and all that stuff, but often times it’s those teams that have a catalyst.”

Fifty-four seconds after Miracle’s goal, Cooper Nolan scored his seventh goal of the season on a counter-attack. Nine minutes later, Adam Sneed received a pass and slotted the ball into the lower corner of the net with 17:26 to play and cap things off for the Tigers.

Edwardsville will face the three-seed O’Fallon, who defeated the fifth-seeded Lancers from Belleville East 3-2 in the following game. The Tigers beat the Panthers 3-1 back on Sept. 20.

More like this:

Print Version