Wheeling Central Girls Soccer Heading Back To Beckley After Regional Title Win vs. Oak Glen
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WHEELING -- The defending state champions have earned a trip back to Beckley.
The Wheeling Central Maroon Knights girls soccer squad broke through in the second half to claim a WVSSAC Class AA/A Region 1 championship over Oak Glen, 7-0.
"Super excited," Wheeling Central head coach Bill Konkle said. "That was the goal at the beginning of the season, to get back to Beckley. We knew every game on our schedule we would be facing teams who'd be giving us their toughest game as they wanted to beat the defending state champions. So, very excited that they put in the work. It’s been a long season and they were able to accomplish their goal to get to Beckley and at least get an opportunity to repeat."
Oak Glen set up a low defensive block from the start of Wednesday's game at 16th Street Field, 'parking the bus' with all of their players on the defensive to try and keep Central off the scoreboard.
The strategy was largely successful in the first half, where the Maroon Knights led 1-0 after the first 40.
Central's lone first-half goal came from Elizabeth Steele, who was in the right place at the right time after a Maroon Knight shot careened off a goal post and right to Steele, who cradled the ball off the rebound and lofted a shot up and over the keeper in the 26th minute.
Oak Glen picked their spots on offense-- and got just what they'd been hoping for in the 38th minute, where they earned a corner kick, but were repelled by Central's defense in what went down as their best scoring chance of the night.
"Congratulations to Wheeling Central," Oak Glen head coach Bill Watts said. "Good luck to them next week. For us, we knew we were a little undermanned here. We played them a couple weeks ago and they beat us pretty badly. So, we came with a plan to try to keep the game close and then come on in the second half, try to get a little more offensive.
"A couple unfortunate bounces there in the first half, you know, got a goal or two in. I thought we did a pretty good job defensively today. The team’s efforts were really good today, so I’m proud of the girls and how they played today."
Central broke through for six goals in the second half, starting in the 44th minute, where Berklee Heller booted an excellent through ball to Elah Konkle for a centered-up strike on the goal.
As Oak Glen was forced to try and extend their formation back out and go on the offensive, Central started pouring it on. Addie Jackson was next in on the action to give the Maroon a 3-0 lead, but it was the back-to-back-to-back attack by Steele, Lonic Kusic and Konkle-- who scored in the 72nd, then 73rd, then 74th minutes, respectively-- which put the game away.
Kusic scored again with under a minute left in the game to reach the evening's final tally.
Kusic also had three assists to pace Wheeling Central. Konkle, Elizabeth and Maddie Steele, and Berklee Heller all had assists as well.
"Oak Glen played an excellent game," coach Konkle said. "They had a good game plan, shut us down in the first half pretty good. It’s tough to defend it and we just hope to do well when we get back to Beckley.
Konkle expects some more of the same in the state tournament.
"A lot of teams, they’ll start crowding the box, making it really difficult for us to score because our midfielders kind of move the ball so quickly," Konkle said. "So, that’s a challenge, we’ll be working on that.
"Our defense has done an excellent job all year. Our goalkeeper, I think that was her 49th career shutout. This team had some girls on their team with high statistics, and we were able to get a zero, shut them out. Our defense takes a lot of pride in what they do, even though they don’t always get the most recognition because it’s not really a stat category. We’ll focus on our defense because we know we’ll be facing some strong attacking teams down there."
Bella Fitzsimmons had two saves for Wheeling Central. Camryn Richards had 10 saves for Oak Glen.
The WVSSAC state tournament starts Nov. 4 at Paul Cline Memorial Sports Complex in Beckley.