By MARK RUSCHAU
Standard Correspondent
The Ottawa-Glandorf Titan soccer team stayed alive in the Western
Buckeye League race as they came to Celina and escaped with
a 1-0 cliffhanger over the Bulldogs at the East School soccer
field.
Ottawa-Glandorf improves to 7-1-2 overall with the win and more
importantly, they improve to 5-0-1 in league play with two conference
games remaining against Shawnee and Defiance which are also
battling for the WBL title. Celina falls to 3-3 in the WBL and
4-6-1 overall.
The story of this one is simple and it’s as simple as
the game itself, Celina fell victim to a hot goaltender. In
this case the hot goaltender was Titan junior Kyle Metzger.
On the evening, Celina outshot O-G 22-9 and Metzger was forced
to make 11 saves.
“There’s not a word to describe what Kyle did tonight
in goal,” said Ottawa-Glandorf coach Mike Weihrauch. “The
words outstanding, unbelievable, incredible, come to mind, pick
one.
“He did the job that we asked him to do,” continued
Weihrauch. “Unfortunately, tonight we asked him to do
more than we normally ask him to do making the routine and maybe
one or two fantastic saves a game. Tonight he had to make five
or six great saves in each half.”
“We just didn’t finish the chances we had,”
said Celina coach Bruce Strine. “It’s like I told
the guys, we had two or three breakaways and we didn’t
finish and you can’t do that against good teams.
“You have to finish on your home field and we just didn’t,”
continued Strine. “We played hard, we outshot them and
their keeper made some great saves.”
In the first half, Celina had several chances to score, the
best of which came in the 10th minute when Alex McKirnan fired
a shot off Metzger, which rebounded right to teammate Brian
Dorsten who had his shot knocked over the goal by Metzger.
On the ensuing corner kick, Chad Strine found Brady Heyne in
the box and his shot was knocked away by Metzger.
In the 21st minute, a shot by Kyle Grunden from 30 yards out
was just knocked over the top of the net by Meztger.
One more time, in the 35th minute, McKirnan made a great look
to Strine who found Alex Adams in the box, but the play was
broken up by Titan forward Zac Fortman.
“Tonight was one of our best defensive games of the season,”
said Weihrauch. “Although they got a lot of shots, we
were in front of them defensively and of course we got great
goaltending. We didn’t give a lot of counter attacks and
those have hurt us all season.”
The Titans kept up the pressure in the second and finally netted
the only goal of the game with Neil Cassidy scoring just six
minutes into the half.
With the lead, Metzger came up huge twice in a three-minute
span to preserve the win. In the 18th minute, McKirnan made
a great run into the box and his shot rebounded to Strine who
fired just wide of the net.
In the 21st minute, McKirnan again made a run into the O-G box
and had Metzger out of position and he fired just wide.
Celina returns to action on Monday at home against Defiance,
which is ranked ninth in Division II.
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