Published Tuesday  |  May 15, 2007

Nebraska State Soccer: Spartans, Patriots resume today

BY STU POSPISIL

WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

They played for 17 minutes and took shelter for 30.

Then Lincoln East and Millard South were told to go home on a stormy Monday night and return today to Creighton's Morrison Stadium to complete their Class A boys soccer semifinal.

Play resumes at noon with 23:19 left in the first half and two-time defending champion East holding a 1-0 lead on the team that ended its state-record 31-match winning streak last month. All-Nebraska football quarterback Jim Ebke got the goal in the seventh minute on a tap-in with his trailing foot on a pass from Brandon Videtich.

At 2 p.m. will be the Kearney-Millard North boys semifinal. The stadium then will be cleared in advance of tonight's Class B girls and boys finals that start at 6.

Tournament director Jennifer Schwartz of the Nebraska School Activities Association stopped the East-Millard South match as the storm line approached, the first weather delay since the state tournament returned in 2005 to Omaha. The stadium has no locker facilities, so tournament officials cleared the grandstand and the teams went upstairs to the commons area for the stadium's suites for about a half-hour.

The forecast of storms continuing for an extended period prompted the decision to send the teams home.

"This stinks. The kids were fired up. We were playing well even though we were down 1-nothing," Patriots coach Jim Cooney said. "East is a great team, and I would rather play them right now and get it over and done with than have to stay up all night thinking about all the things that could go wrong tomorrow, like coaches do, instead of all the things that could go right."

East coach Jeff Hoham tried to minimize the distraction.

"We're going to get my guys home tonight, get a good night's rest, have breakfast and we come back and act like it didn't happen," he said. "One-zero is better than 0-1, so we'll take it. We definitely earned it on the field tonight. Hope we don't lose our momentum."

The Spartans had chances to have a multiple-goal lead. "East's counterattacks have been excellent," Cooney said. "We have to get back behind the ball."

East in state final for 5th time in 6 seasons

By BRENT C. WAGNER / Lincoln Journal Star

Tuesday, May 15, 2007 - 08:01:57 pm CDT

OMAHA — Jeff Hoham placed a phone call a few nights ago to two of his Lincoln East boys soccer players.

The coach says when he called A.J. Dingledine, he was studying with his girlfriend. Jim Ebke was reading a book.

≥What are these guys, a throwback to 1956,≤ Hoham said.

Something else is becoming an old-school occurrence for the Spartans — playing in the Class A state championship game.

Ebke and Dingledine each scored goals to lead the Spartans to a 3-0 victory against Millard South in the semifinals. Action was completed Tuesday afternoon after the game was suspended because of severe weather Monday night.

The final goal came when a Millard South defender knocked the ball into his own goal with 11 minutes remaining in the game.

East has a date in the championship game for the fifth time in six seasons and will try for an all-class state-record third straight state championship. The Spartans will play Millard North, which beat Kearney 2-0 in the other semifinal game, in tonightπs championship game.

Earlier this season, Millard South beat East to end the Spartans state-record 31-game winning streak. Millard South won the first two games between the teams this season, but East edged the Patriots 4-0 in the district final and 3-0 in the state semifinals.

≥In six years as a head coach I canπt remember playing a team that talented and shutting them out in two games of such importance,≤ Hoham said. ≥Iπm thrilled with our performance, because Millard South is an outstanding soccer team.≤

Goalkeeper Anthony Reichwaldt says it was extra special to avenge two losses to the Patriots to make the championship game. Even better was outscoring Millard South 7-0 in two postseason games.

≥That shows we picked it up at the end of the season,≤ Reichwaldt said. ≥We had a chip on our shoulders losing to them twice. We controlled the game and the scoreboard.≤

Dingledineπs three-goal game in an opening round win against Millard West was the early talk of the tournament.

Ebkeπs goal was a hot topic of discussion, too. But it was a debate as to whether Ebke intended to score in the manner in which he did when he scored Eastπs first goal only six minutes into the first half.

Brandon Videtich passed to Ebke streaking toward the goal, and Ebke maneuvered to make a play. The ball bounced off the heel of his trail leg, and trickled into the corner of the net.

≥Brandon sent a great ball right across the middle, and there was one defender on me,≤ Ebke said. ≥I made sure he didnπt get it, and I got a foot on it and just pulled it around.≤

So, was it intended to be such a graceful looking goal?

≥Well,≤ Ebke said with a grin. ≥I was trying to get one more touch on it, and I was just kind of turning around, and then I was going to kick it. But it went in off of my turn instead of the kick.≤

You donπt get style points, however, and a goal in the state tourney felt great regardless.

≥Some guys on the bus ride home were giving me crap, saying that I didnπt know what I was doing,≤ Ebke said. ≥Some guys were trying to help me out, and tell everybody that I did it on purpose. I just went along with those guys.≤

While Dingledine is expected to produce for the Spartans, Ebkeπs goal was more of a surprise. Heπs playing his first year of competitive soccer as a senior and has four goals.

Dingledine again found a way to score in traffic in front of the net to give East a 2-0 lead with four minutes left in the first half. It was his fourth goal of the tournament and 24th overall in 19 games.

It was a considerable accomplishment for East to control possession and dominate shots-on-goal. The Spartans did so by avoiding playing the ball to the Millard South central midfield, a unit Hoham said is the best heπs seen in 13-years of high school soccer.

≥Lincoln East knew our strength, so they were just skipping the midfield and getting it up to the strikers,≤ Patriots coach Jim Cooney said. ≥It was smart — really smart.≤

≥Their whole defense played great; we didnπt have very many opportunities,≤ Cooney added. ≥We could get the ball to the 18, but then we were getting stymied as soon as we got it there — I was impressed.≤

Now East has a much-anticipated meeting against top-ranked Millard North (21-0). The Spartans (16-3) and Mustangs have not played this season.

≥We still have a lot of experience in state championship games, and hopefully we can get that third straight title,≤ Reichwaldt said.

East plays for 3 in a row

East's defense, which was overhauled before districts, shut out Millard South for the second time in the postseason. The 3-0 victory was the Spartans' record eighth straight in the Class A boys tournament.

"It was essentially dropping Joe Baker back to center defender, bringing in freshman Sam Nobbe and getting the redefinition roles throughout," Spartans coach Jeff Hoham said. "That's really why we're a better team, because of those position changes."

Millard South coach Jim Cooney said East played smart in skipping its midfielders and going to its strikers.

"We had trouble recovering," Cooney said. "On their direct kicks, I don't know if you noticed they were a little taller than us. They were winning the headers in the air, and I thought we made some bad decisions at times."

One would have been an own goal that gave East a 3-0 lead in the second half. The Spartans left the field Monday night with a 1-0 lead on Jim Ebke's back-foot tap-in and made it 2-0 before halftime Tuesday on AJ Dingledine's goal.

"We did a great job," Hoham said. "Millard South is an incredibly talented team. It helped having a little time off to regenerate our batteries and talk about some strategy."

Millard South (18-5).........................0 0-0

Lincoln East (16-3).........................2 1-3

Ä Goals: 1, LE, Jim Ebke (Brandon Videtich), 6:35. 2, LE, AJ Dingledine, 36:58. 3, LE, own goal, 68:13.