photo by: Kim North

St. Clairsville’s Parker Galloway (3) is congratulated by teammates Lucas Causey (0) and Mavrik Malin (6) after scoring his second goal Saturday in a 3-0 victory over Beaver Local in the OVAC Class 5A Boys Soccer Championship match. Brennan Rice is pictured behind Galloway.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Oh home sweet home.

Playing on the familiar artificial pitch inside Red Devil Stadium, St. Clairsville showed why it was the No. 1 seed in the OVAC Class 4A boys’ soccer tournament.

Saturday morning the Red Devils (9-1-1) captured their fifth conference championship in program history with a 3-0 victory over second-seeded Beaver Local. They had blanked the Beavers (9-3) by a 1-0 count earlier in the season in Lisbon.

The championship was the first since St. Clairsville went back-to-back in 2019 and 2020. They lost to Weir in the 2021 finals.

“It was a great match,” St. Clairsville head coach Jeff Roberts said. “We came out firing from the start and we kept the pressure on. Our set-pieces looked pretty good today and Lucas Causey had two assists and Parker Galloway got two goals.”

Trevor Tuttle and Parker Galloway scored first-half goals on back-to-back shots to give St. Clairsville a lead it would never relinquish. Tuttle scored on a tap-in in the 30th minute and the high-scoring Galloway found the net four minutes later.

“He doesn’t score much but he’s been going up for us and he’s been able to get his head on the ball,” Roberts recalled. “That was a big goal for us.”

Galloway, who also doubles as the Red Devils’ placekicker in football, upped the count to 3-0 in the 60th minute. Breaking in all alone on the left wing, he nudged the ball forward with his right toe just before a charging Beaver Local goalkeeper Cole Long could get to it. The ball slowly trickled across the goal line.

St. Clairsville senior goalkeeper Talan Rice earned the shutout by denying all five shots he faced, including just one in the second half..It was his fourth consecutive shutout and eighth this season.

“Another clean sheet for Talan,” Roberts said. “I think we limited them to the amount of shots they had.”

The whitewashing was the fourth in a row for the lanky Rice, who charted six saves, but only two after the intermission.

“It feels great,” Rice said of finally being able to hold the championship trophy. “We lost in the semifinals three previous times, and twice to Beaver Local, so to be able to beat them for this title makes it even sweeter. This is what we’ve been working for for the last four years.”