The Eagles soccer team was not expected to walk away with the Class 2, District 9 championship as they have at times in the past. 
However, that is exactly what happened as the Eagles, 17-6-2, totally dominated the Father Tolton Trailblazers in a 3-0 championship win. That’s right – the same Trailblazers team that raced around the field and defeated the Eagles 1-0 a week ago. That team was completely bottled up by a SoBoCo team which had been having plenty of trouble scoring in recent weeks.
Not last Thursday night.
The Eagles got an early goal from Ian McCluskey on a terrific lead pass by Sam Bonderer, then got a second goal from freshman Rece Gilmore. The Eagles nearly scored twice more in the first half as they pressured the Tolton goal.
“It was important to get that second goal so quickly,” Eagles coach Chris Miller said. “That gave us some breathing room and we were able to do some things the rest of the game.”
The Trailblazers in one instance were unable to clear the ball and had a volley go off a defender’s leg, hitting the post nearly resulting in an own goal. Towards the end of the half, McCluskey caught the Trailblazers flat-footed and raced towards goal in an one-on-one attempt, however, McCluskey’s shot was mis-hit and SoBoCo’s Nolan Groseclose narrowly missed tapping in the errant shot.
Up 2-0 at the beginning of the second half, Eagles fans were waiting on a big offensive push from Tolton and the Trailblazers attempted to run right at the Eagles, move a third player forward and another player towards the midfield. However, the Eagles defense was more than equal to the task and never gave the Trailblazers a solid shot inside of 20 yards the entire half.
~ Get more on this story in today’s Journal ~
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