When it boiled down to it, the game was simply a matter of pride. With Fluvanna County and Western Albemarle having already locked up their positions in the Region II tournament, the pride wound up going to the Flucos, who, two days after scoring a goal to take the lead on the Warriors, wound up holding onto that lead for a 1-0 on Saturday morning. For many teams, that sense of pride would be simply about earning a Jefferson District tournament title. For Fluvanna, it was a bit more. For the first time ever, the school earned a JD sweep.
“All the goals that we set at the beginning of the year and all the goals I set when I first took over as coach seven years ago – we’ve accomplished everything with this team right here,” said Flucos coach Patrick Dieter. “But we want to continue. We have yet to win a game in regionals, so in a way it’s a new season now.”
The Flucos scored the game’s only goal on Thursday night when Nick Shepherd took a shot from the center of the field way-out in front of the box.
“It came off a header from (Western’s) Tom Rogers and landed right by me,” Shepherd recounted of the score. “I was just able to get it above (Warriors goalkeeper) Kai Shin.”
That goal came midway through the first half, but after lightning struck on Thursday with eight minutes and change to play, the contests was postponed for the remainder to be played on Friday. Another storm constricted the two from resuming play, and so once again the game pushed back, this time until Saturday morning.
The final 48 minutes featured the same brand of soccer seen in the previous two regular season meetings where little head-way was made. Both of those games ended in ties, but with Shepherd’s goal from Thursday, that wasn’t the case this time.
Western threatened on three occasions, two of which came midway through the second half, but Fluvanna goalie Nick Greco had little trouble coming up to make the play.
The Flucos had an opportunity to tie the game on a penalty kick with time winding down, but Shin came up with a huge save to keep his team in it. Though the Warriors applied pressure in the final minutes of play, they could not get a clean look at the net, as Fluvanna successfully defended its end of the field on a corner kick and later a free kick from the right side of the box.
“I think it would have been an entirely different game if we had come into today with 0-0 tie,” said Western coach Paul Rittenhouse. “There’s still a lot of things that we could have controlled and managed though.”
Unfortunately for the Warriors, they will head into Region II play against Brentsville on Monday with a handful of injuries. Alex Nolet reaggravated an ankle sprain late in the game against Fluvanna while Aaron Myers was out with a concussion.
“Suddenly we’re down one maybe two players again,” Rittenhouse said. “The good news is that we’re experienced with that.”
Fluvanna on the other hand, enters regional play against Kettle Run at full strength – something that was not the case last year.
“Big injuries to key players had gotten us it seems almost every year,” Dieter said. “We’re excited about going into the region tournament pretty healthy.”
