Holtzapple's career night lifts Riders

ST. MARYS - In an increasingly-common trend this season, Quinn Holtzapple was on fire for St. Marys Thursday night.

Holtzapple scored four goals, earning his third hat trick of the season, as the Roughriders snapped Wapakoneta's three-game win streak with a 6-1 victory in a Western Buckeye League boys soccer match at Roughrider Field.

"This is one of the best executions of a plan we've had since I've been at St. Marys," Roughriders coach Josh Hertenstein said. "We wanted to attack the sides, get it to the top of the box and shoot, and Quinn was on tonight. He was feeling it before the game, he said, and he went out there and he definitely did it."

Holtzapple put St. Marys (6-1) on the board with just over five minutes off the board after Reese Triplett worked the ball down the left side. Triplett passed to Holtzapple in the middle, and Holtzapple dribbled back to the left before shooting inside the left post for his first goal.

A.J. Dieringer doubled the lead seven minutes later on a pass from Cody Birt, taking a shot from 25 yards out on the right side into the top right corner.

"We gave all their guys too much room 25, 30 yards out, and we weren't able to step to that," Wapakoneta coach Scott Brinkman said.

With 18 minutes left in the first half, Holtzapple broke the game open. He drew a foul about 20 yards out for a direct kick and fired a high shot that brushed Casebolt's hand before hitting the back of the net, making it 3-0 with 17:42 left. Just 40 seconds later, after a Wapakoneta (3-2) turnover, he came down the right edge of the box and fired across the net into the left side from about 12 yards out to add another score.

"We knew Quinn Holtzapple was a special, special player, and he certainly showed that," Brinkman said. "He, I think, was able to get open early, and we didn't step to press him."

After halftime, Holtzapple sent a crosser to the back post, where Easton Craft headed it in to make it 5-0 with 33:52 remaining. After the Redskins got the goal back, Holtzapple added his fourth with 8:02 to play, sneaking a long shot off a pass from Craft past a sliding Wapakoneta defender and a diving Casebolt.

All told, the Roughriders took 16 shots on goal and scored on six, with four goals on seven shots in the first half.

"We get a lot of shots, we produce a lot with our possession-building, we just, a lot of times, don't put them in the net," Hertenstein said. "This was one of those nights when we actually found the net. If we can keep that going, hopefully it keeps clicking."

Wapakoneta got its lone tally with 22:10 to play, as St. Marys keeper Cayden Ballweg stopped a shot but couldn't corral the rebound. Taylor Echols swooped in and fired a shot over Ballweg's head for the score.

Ballweg finished with 10 saves, but the Redskins rarely mounted a sustained attack. The Roughriders dominated time of possession in the first half, and though Wapakoneta managed to bring more pressure in the first 10 minutes after the break, it wasn't able to keep the heat on Ballweg the rest of the way.

"We knew that they were awfully good in the midfield, and when you control the midfield, you control the game," Brinkman said. "The other thing was, we tried to play very direct, and that just didn't work tonight. We should probably have tried the ball a bit more and been less direct with it. If we had possessed the ball a little more, that would've given us time to build things instead of trying to go 1 v. 3 or 2 v. 4 against them."

"I'd like to clean up our possession a little bit more," Hertenstein said. "It's funny to say after a game where you had most of the possession, but I think we can clean it up, we can be better. I like to possess it enough where you have the other team chase and kind of break their spirits."

St. Marys returns to action Tuesday when Ottawa-Glandorf comes to Roughrider Field.