SOUTH BEND - The Tigers knew what they were up against even before they stepped on the field Saturday.

The upstart Warsaw boys soccer team was matched up in the first round of the semistate against state-power Fort Wayne Canterbury. The Cavaliers had been mowing down opponents, winning their regional title by a score of 4-0 and having four goals nullified.

Warsaw, on the other hand, had come off of a 1-0 win in which the Tigers outscored Angola 4-2 in a shootout for the narrowest of victories.

On Saturday, the trend continued for Canterbury as the Cavaliers scored five goals in the first half en route to a 5-0 victory.

At 9:16 into the first half, John Presser gave Canterbury the only goal it would need on the first of three assists from Dustin Penn to give the Cavaliers a 1-0 lead.

Just over eight minutes later, Presser picked up an assist on a goal from Dan Limberg to make the score 2-0. Phil Presser added two goals in a three minute span at 24:48 and 27:30 and Luke Carpenter closed out the scoring for the Cavaliers at 35:17 of the first half as Canterbury took a 5-0 lead.

Neither team scored in the second half as Canterbury held the comfortable lead and did not risk letting the Tigers back in the match.

"We played a little bit better (in the second half)," Warsaw head coach Corey Rose said. "But towards the end of the second half they started to rest their starters. They put their second stringers in. They were definitely the dominant team and deserved to win the semistate and probably the state (championship). Whenever you get that far into the tournament, you're going to have to play some good ball and beat some good teams."

Warsaw could not get a single shot on goal in the first half and ended with just four compared to Canterbury's 14.

Rose made sure his team went down swinging. In the regional, Angola was content to pack in the defense for 95 minutes and then take a shot at knocking off the favored Tigers in a shootout. However, Rose was not about to alter his game plan to attempt the same thing against Canterbury.

"I was just going to play them straight up," Rose said. "I did talk to my defense a little bit and stress that we needed to work on containing the ball, keeping them in front of us, and not letting them turn with the ball. They're a short passing team and if we could just keep them in front of us and keep them passing the ball and keep them marked up, we should be OK. We let some people open, they found the open man and they put the ball away."

The Tigers were led this season by a number of seniors like goaltender Matt Brown, who pitched two shutouts in the tournament, midfielders Brett Dickerson and Dan Ropte, defensive players David Gehrke and Matt Burgher, and forward Phillip Hood.

"They're going to be hard to replace," Rose said. "We have a couple of all-district players from last year that came back. Goalie is going to be a question mark for us next year. We're definitely going to be rebuilding because we're losing some big guns that got us to this point this year."

Warsaw ends the season with a record of 8-8-4 after starting the season 0-5-1. Canterbury is now 17-2-2 after defeating Argos 2-0 in the semistate championship game. [[In-content Ad]]