5/19/09 - Thomas Jefferson -

We welcome to our field tonight the cross town rival Yellow Jackets from Thomas Jefferson.  Big game tonight with a share of city championship on the line.  We win and we have a three way tie with TJ and St Alberts, lose and TJ is city champs straight up.  It is a warm, sunny night with once again high winds out of the south.  We had a great crowd tonight, and it nice to see the support.  Less then 7 minutes into the game we take the early lead as Kyle Larkin winds up and sends it on goal from 25 yards out, catches the keeper off guard and off his line and it hits the net, 1-0.  From there it is an all out defensive battle till the half and we go into the half with the lead.  We managed to control the game, good pass combinations and we are keeping them on their heels.  The second half we are going into the wind.  We ask them to keep the ball on the ground, continue to mark up, win the 50/50 balls, move it around, and we can score again and come away with a win.  But just less then 3 minutes into the half TJ sets up for a corner kick, we leave the back door unmarked, and they are there for the header to tie up the game.  Ten minutes later, they take the lead on their second goal of the game.  We start walking in the middle of the field, losing our marks, and on a great crossing pattern in front of the goal, 9 minutes later they put in their 3rd goal of the night.  With 8 minutes left in the game Kyle Larkin sends a crossing ball in front of the net and Zack Shea is there to put it away.  2-3 now and we start to press harder to get the tie.  The clock now is against us, TJ's defense holds up and we are unable to get the tying goal.  We go down and TJ walks off the field as city champs.  The second half once again does it's number on us as we are up at the half and lose the battle.  We have several unfinished opportunities in the first and second half, and we played way too well and too hard to lose this game.  Defensively Ryan Cook, Colin Duffy, Jordan Higgins, and Chris Wenck played a good game.  It was also senior night tonight as we said Thank You to our outgoing seniors and let them know that we appreciated all that they have done for the Titan program the last 4 years.  Our seniors were Kyle Larkin, Jordan Higgins, Chris Wenck, Ryan Cook, Nate Dreager, Tyler Meleney, & Nate Jones.  Thank you gentlemen for all of your efforts, leadership, and contributions to the program.  Good luck to you as you move on to the next step in your lives.  Join us on Friday for our final home game of the regular season as we play Denison.  This will be a Hawkeye 10 conference battle and a must win.  Due to senior graduation activities, the varsity will play first on Friday at 4:30, please join us on Friday.

JV fought a real battle tonight as well as they played to a 1-1 tie.  Trevor Stephens had a good night in the goal tonight, giving up one goal, but he logged 12 saves for the night.  Cristian Navarrete scored the lone goal in the game on a nice through ball from Troy Mahood.  JV has one game left on Friday against Denison.  They will play in the second game on Friday after the Varsity game.

We also had some good news today for the program as we had a college signing two of our seniors.  Kyle Larkin and Nate Dreager signed today to play for Morningside.  Congratulations gentlemen and good luck with your careers at Morningside.  More to come on this story along with pictures tomorrow. 

Thank you all for your support and your visits to our page. Keep checking back I will post different things off and on.  Interested in how the boys did and what they look like, then check out the 2009 Varsity Squad & Stats and 2009 Junior Varsity Squad & Stats pages to see our running season stats. Check back again for more comments.