Warsaw soccer team wins sixth-straight regional championship
Posted
Anthony Gadson-agadson@timesuniononline.com
MISHAWAKA — Avenging an earlier loss to Northridge, the Class 2A No. 9 Warsaw boys soccer team downed the No. 18 Raiders 1-0 Saturday night in Mishawaka, claiming its sixth-straight regional crown. In the final game of the Northern Lakes Conference season for each team, Warsaw fell 1-0 in Middlebury on Oct. 3, although the game was called with nine minutes to play due to lightning and rain. Playing the entire 80 minutes in the Mishawaka Regional championship game, a goal by junior midfielder Tito Cuellar in the 68th minute proved to be the difference. The Warsaw Tigers maintained pressure throughout the entire second half, but the scoring opportunity finally came after senior Zack Tucker headed a ball ahead to junior Sam Allbritten. Allbritten went for the goal, but Northridge junior goalkeeper Philip Keller made the save, getting out of position enough to allow Cuellar to come in and put the ball into the back of the net. “Zack headed it up, I got a look at goal, but (Keller) got a foot on it, then I got up to see Tito bury it into the back of the net,” Allbritten said. The goal is Cuellar’s seventh in four postseason games, accounting for more than half the team’s total of 13. “Tito seems to be at the right spot at the right time,” Warsaw coach Scott Bauer said. “He’s a scavenger. He’s a scavenger, but you have to have one of those on your team. “Something motivates the young man and I think it’s called the game of soccer,” he added. Constantly on the move, the fact that Cuellar earned Bauer’s moniker as a ‘scavenger’ is done through hard work and constant movement. “I didn’t want to give up,” Cuellar said. “We deserved (the goal), because our team worked hard. That’s what really counts right now. “I knew something bad was going to happen (for Northridge), and I saw the mistake happen,” he added. “I went in and just had it right there.” Shortly after the goal, tempers began to boil on the Northridge sideline, when after a yellow card was pulled out for senior Steven Hooley, a Northridge assistant was then issued a red card for screaming at the officials in a demonstrative fashion. The cause for the rage was a perceived lack of limiting the physical play, an issue Bauer could agree with, but didn’t mind as much. “In our St. Joe game (Thursday), he officiated more or less the same way,” Bauer said of the lead official. “It was a real physical match. He allows the game to be played physical, almost more like the college level. I understand some of their issues, I saw some of them too, but that’s his style of officiating. I think they probably got the worst of it, but that’s because we knew we could play physical. I would assume they knew too, because they saw (our) game against St. Joe.” At the end of the night, Warsaw had been whistled for 20 fouls and Northridge for 18, with four of those being offsides, two being yellow cards and another being the red card. “I think it did play to our benefit, being able to play physical, because I have some brave boys who go in at 100 percent,” Bauer said. “They don't back down.” One of those boys is Allbritten, who had to use some physicality to muscle his way into the box, resulting in the assist for the winning goal. “If the official, like tonight, let’s you play physical, I’m alright with it,” he said. “I can handle it, I can deliver hits. It’s up to our team though. Some of our guys like hits, but some guys shy away from it. But I’m one of those guys that like physical play.” Warsaw will now take that physical play into the semistate, which its hosts Saturday, beginning at 10 a.m. The opening game of the semifinal will pit two unranked teams against each other, as Marion (16-3) takes on Fort Wayne Canterbury (13-7-1), which had won the previous two Class 1A state titles before moving up to 2A this year. Following that game, Warsaw faces No. 4 Crown Point (18-0-1), with the championship then taking place at 7 p.m. “We don’t want to give up yet,” Cuellar said. “We know we can go far.”
