For the first three quarters of the game, William Monroe’s Josh Baker had to be on his toes, but didn’t have to do much in terms of making stops in goal. That changed through in as the second half wound down. The junior goalkeeper came up with three huge stops as John Champe’s offense finally found a way to get through and finally shoot through the Dragons defense. Baker stood tall in each situation and as a result, Monroe was able to hang on to win the Conference 28 championship, 1-0.
“The defense wanted this one real bad and I can’t say enough about them,” said Monroe coach Matt Dunn. “They really tightened up in a defensive game. We had our midfielders right up with our defenders and they try to play a lot of balls over the top. We knew (that coming in) and we just controlled that right from the start.”
Before Baker came up with the last game heroics, the story for the Dragons were the defenders in front of him. Monroe crowded the middle the field all game long and did not allow the Knights to field any clean shots from close in. As a result of all the blocked shots, Champe was forced to try and take its shots from a good distance out and towards the sidelines. While the Knights had a pair of quality shots there early in the second half, neither were on net.
“Playing with (this defense) is like playing behind and iron wall and I love it,” Baker said. “There was quite of bit of pressure (at the end). It was quite nerve-racking through my eyes. I wasn’t nervous, but it’s still nerve-racking. So I just tried to get my body in front of the ball as I always try to do.”
Conversely, Monroe applied a great deal of pressure early on. With 14 minutes to play in the first half off a free kick from Clayton Hoffmeister, Phillip Hall broke through for the Dragons to make it 1-0.
“He kicked it right into the middle and it went off Alec Yost’s head,” Hall said. “The ball just went right into the open space where I was standing so I just had to get it right in.”
From that point on the Dragons played conservatively, making sure not to afford the Knights any fast break opportunities. By that same token though, Monroe had a trio of fast breaks in the second half, but the Champe defense led by captain Stephen Rambo was quick to diffuse two of them and keeper Marc Romagnoli came up with the stop on the other.
“It was really tense out there the whole time,” Hall said. “But because we were up by a goal we were playing with a lot of confidence.”
Monroe was able to keep Champe quiet until a sense of urgency crept in for the Knights. The Dragons spent the last five minutes backed up in their own end, but it was there that Baker stepped up and made his mark.
With the win, Monroe advances to the Region 3A West tournament and will host Kettle Run on Monday at 7 p.m.
“I’ve been an assistant here for two years before I took the head job this year and I’ve got such a great group of kids,” Dunn said. “This is such a great team and I can’t give them enough credit.”
