After the Bay girls soccer team punched its ticket to a Nov. 5 regional final with their 4-2 victory Nov. 1 over Hoban, the Bay boys looked to do the same to meet them in Twinsburg for a potential regional final doubleheader for the school.
Standing in the way was CVCA, a team the Rockets bested, 2-0, in last year’s district final at Strongsville.
With even more at stake and a trip to the regional final on the line 368 days later – and at the same exact Strongsville field at Pat Catan Stadium, the Royals got their revenge, taking down Bay 1-0. The score came on an own goal in the 54th minute.
“A brutal game,” Bay head coach Robert Dougherty said. “Sometimes, it just doesn’t go. We scored one. That was an incredible effort by Reed (Clark) to win a ball the goalkeeper should win 99 percent of the time. Reed just jumped up on it and scored and it was unfortunate it was called back. No one else saw it that way, but it’s just the nature of the beast. On the other side of it we hit three off the post and it’s a brutal game.”
The play in question was as close as it could get. Four minutes before CVCA got on the board, Clark and the goalie went for a jump ball that if not called back, would have tied the game and potentially shifted the game in Bay’s favor.
As the CVCA goalkeeper and Clark went into the air, the goalie was just a hair quicker to get his hands on the ball just before Clark’s head could connect and he would wind up kicking it behind him and in. The officials shortly waved off the goal and kept the game in a scoreless tie.
“Sometimes, the ball doesn’t go,” Dougherty added. “A great game and CVCA did a phenomenal job. (They’re) the first team that did a really impressive job with possession in the midfield. I thought they didn’t really get a whole lot going in the final third, but they did a very good job in the middle third. It took an own goal.”
Aside from the loss dropping the Rockets to 15-3-3, it brings the end of an era for players like Clark, Million Evans and 2021 All-American Ethan Jacobs, who formed the core of a talented team that had kept their opponents scoreless and had 17 goals through its first three postseason contests.
“CVCA went out last year to us, and we knew their motivation was not to go out with the same team,” Dougherty said. “Our motivation was we have a real tight group that’s been around a long-time. You’re just hoping that you’re fighting into the last day, and it came up a little short. It’s not from a lack of effort, training or all the rest of it. The boys played incredibly well and they just didn’t get a goal tonight.”
Among that senior group, Evans has one more high school game left as a Bay Rocket. He’ll play in the High School All-American Game on Dec. 10 in Panama City, Fla.
