INDIANAPOLIS — Crawfordsville boys soccer knew they were going to have an up-hill battle on Wednesday. After their sectional championship thriller over Cascade, CHS traveled to Brebeuf for a with the No. 3 ranked Brebeuf Braves in the Regional semi-finals. Playing in hostile territory and against a very talented team that one the state title a year ago proved to be too much for the Athenians to handle as they saw their season come to an end with a 7-0 loss.
Crawfordsville ends its season with an 11-7 record that includes yet another county title and the teams first sectional championship since 2016.
“First and foremost I couldn’t be more proud of our senior class,” Crawfordsville coach Marcus Hale said. “Yeison Cifuentes, Andrew Jones, Shota Koyanagi, along with Airton Schu and Gio Hernandez all competed very well today. The result today doesn’t diminish what we accomplished this year at all. Brebeuf are the defending state champions for a reason. We have something that we can learn from tonight and that’s what we’re going to do,”
Brebeuf patient-style of offense didn’t allow the Athenians many scoring opportunities as the Braves controlled possession for nearly the entire game. When the Braves did decide to take their chances, they were very successful with finding the back of the net. A pair of goals in the final 10 minutes of the first half made it 3-0 at the half and the Braves added four more in the second half to cruise to a Regional championship appearance on Saturday.
“We’re a very patient team and that’s something we’ve really worked on this season,” Brebeuf coach Carlos Zavaleta said. “I thought in the beginning we were a little rushed. Crawfordsville dropped a lot of guys back which forced up to be even more patient. We had to move the ball around and find gaps when a team plays like that. Our defense, as much as we’re a possession based team, is very organized as well. They were very disciplined tonight.”
Hale noted how that style of play while it’s nothing new for his team to play against, is still very difficult to stop.
“We saw that kind of play from Faith Christian and West Lafayette,” he said. “It’s something that we can learn from is to play teams who are very good at possessing the ball. Sometimes against teams like that you might only have a few chances to capitalize and put a goal on the board. It’s a very tiring thing to have to defend for a full 80 minutes as well.”
This season Crawfordsville had its best offensive season in school history as they broke the single season goals record as they end the year with 89 goals total. A big part of that was junior Patrick Corado who ended his stellar season with 39 goals. Those 39 goals entering Wednesday evening had Corado tied for third in the entire state. Ryo Nishina (19) and Manuel Olvera (12) joined Corado as the Athenians had a three-headed monster on offense.
The Athenians will return all three of those players for next season as well as the plethora of talent surrounding them. With that returning talent, there’s no reason not to think Crawfordsville can’t get back to the Regional.
“This current senior class was really the group that through their leadership showed this group what we could accomplish,” Hale said. “We achieved some goals that were sort of some stretch goals for us. We really showed this group how to get better in practice every single day. That’s something our younger kids can apply towards next year. We do have plenty of talented kids returning for next year and some coming up through the middle school so we’ll see what next year holds.”
