BELLEVILLE – Edwardsville boys soccer junior forward Brennan Weller scored the only goal of the match on a very cold and rainy Tuesday evening as the Tigers defeated O’Fallon 1-0 in the semifinals of the IHSA Class 3A Normal Community West sectional at Belleville East’s Charlie Woodford Field.
The goal came in right before the half-hour off a corner kick taken by Jakob Doyle, who found Kurt Wright at the back post. Wright laid the ball off to Weller in the middle of the box, and from there, Weller headed it into the far left corner of the net past Panther keeper Steve Merrill to give Edwardsville the win.
“It means a lot,” Weller said about the goal in the post match interview. “It means a lot to be part of a great win like tonight.”
The goal came about due to the work the Tigers put in on the training pitch the day before, where Edwardsville worked on its corner kick set pieces for an hour in preparation for the match.
“Yesterday in practice, we were working on corner kicks a lot towards the end of practice,” Weller said. “We had Doyle hitting them in far post, so that somebody could hit it back across the box for us to have a chance to score, and that’s exactly what we did. Doyle found Kurt on the back post, and Kurt was able to head it in my direction, and I was able to put it away.”
It was a great goal for the Tigers, and Weller gave all credit to Wright for the perfect set-up.
“It never could have happened without Kurt, though,” Weller said. “Kurt set it up me, and made my job easy.”
The second half was a very nip-and-tuck affair, with both teams having great opportunities to score. O’Fallon showed a lot of urgency in its play to get an equalizer, but the Tiger defense was able to hold off the Panther attack.
“It was a physical fight,” Weller said. “Both teams really wanted it, both teams played their hearts out. It was a good battle.”
The Tigers move on to the last 16, and will play Moline in the sectional final at Normal Community West high, the Maroons defeating Joliet West 3-2 in the other semifinal. Weller feels the Tigers’ mindset will be calm, cool and collected.
“We just got to play it calm, collected and confident,” Weller said. “like how the way we came out here tonight, and I think we’ll have a great shot at winning.”
Past that, there’s next week’s super-sectional match and the state finals next weekend at Hoffman Estates High School in northwest suburban Chicago. The Tigers could possibly bring home their third state championship that weekend, and the team is feeling confident, but Weller also knows that they’ll take things one at a time.
“We’re pretty confident, but at the same time, we just want to take it one game at a time,” Weller said. “and not get ahead of ourselves.”
