Two goals in two minutes catapults Owen J. Roberts over Penn Wood
BUCKTOWN >> Owen J. Roberts boys soccer coach Eric Wentzel must have a special talent for pregame speeches.
Or maybe his players were especially hungry after losing in the Pioneer Athletic Conference championship to Boyertown in penalty kicks their last time out.
“We’re coming off the PK loss and you don’t know how the kids are going to respond,” Wentzel said. “You tell them, ‘OK, we’re the better team. Go out and show it right away.’
“It was a dream start.”
The No. 5 seed Wildcats came out on fire by getting goals from Taurean Lee and Andrew Siana in just over two minutes to start their District 1-AAA playoff game with Penn Wood en route to a 4-1 victory Tuesday night at Owen J. Roberts.
Siana and Lee each had two goals while Siana added an assist, as did Graham Pugh and Bruce Dowlin to help OJR improve to 16-5.
“My teammates were playing really good through balls,” Siana said. “Graham Pugh had a great through ball through at least three defenders that I was lucky to be on the end of (for the team’s second goal). Bruce (Dowlin) was distributing well to the wings. It was a great team performance.”
Penn Wood (11-6-2), the No. 28 seed, got its goal from A.J. Diallo to cut the lead to 2-1 with 11 minutes until halftime.
“Give them credit, they didn’t stop,” Wentzel said of Penn Wood. “Everyone told me, they are fast. You could see their athleticism and their speed. They got disorganized at times but were so dangerous.”
But the sluggish start proved to be a fatal blow.
“It’s a disappointment. We had a pretty good squad and we came out really slow. You can’t spot a team like this two goals in four minutes,” Penn Wood coach Ed Kramer said. “We’re proud we made the playoffs, but at the same time we’re a better team than this. We definitely think we could have pulled off an upset.”
There were visions of an upset still alive until Siana summoned a bit of ‘magic’, as he described it.
Bursting down the left side toward the end line, Siana struck a lofted, tight-angle, right-footed shot with the outside of his boot over Penn Wood keeper Agbaadem Goodwill that fell into the far side of the goal for the back-breaking 3-1 lead.
“I tried to keep my head up, beat some defenders and got pretty lucky with the finish. I put some magic on it and it fell for me,” Siana said.
Lee capped the proceedings from close range from a Siana pass to give OJR a second-round meeting with No. 12 Downingtown West on Thursday at OJR.
It was just the sort of response OJR would have hoped for after they weren’t the ones celebrating after the PAC-10 final five days before.
“We knew we could look ourselves in the mirror and feel we were the better team, that we had the better chances and if it didn’t go to PKs I think we would have been the team to score first,” Siana said. “All the props to them (Boyertown) – they took their PKs like professionals – but we tried to brush it off to get ourselves set for districts.”
