Shootout win sends Devils to title game
SportsHigh School
Leominster will play for Division 1 crown on Thursday
By Sean Sweeney |
TOWNSEND — For the second consecutive playoff match, the Leominster boys soccer team needed penalties to decide who would advance in this year's Central Mass. Division 1 tournament.
For the second consecutive match, the No. 3 Blue Devils won the shootout.
Alex Miller's well-taken penalty — which came after Westboro's Owen Gately had re-taken a saved penalty, harkening back to this summer's FIFA Women's World Cup — lifted the Blue Devils to the Central Mass. final, as Leominster downed the No. 10 Rangers, 3-2 (5-4 on penalties) in the Central Mass. Division 1 boys soccer semifinals on Monday at 1A Auto Field in the John E. Young Memorial Athletic Complex.
Third-seeded LHS (14-4-1) will next play either St. John's of Shrewsbury or Shrewsbury in Thursday's Division 1 final, which will be played at a site yet to be determined. Westboro's season came to a close at 9-6-6.
With time running down in regulation and the Blue Devils trailing 2-1, goalkeeper Franco Barretto pushed all the way up and scored on a header off an indirect free kick some 23 yards from goal, pulling Leominster level and setting up extra time.
And while both sides had opportunities in the extra 20 minutes, neither could pop a goal.
The first two rounds of penalties saw both sides level at 2-2 before Barretto easily saved a poorly taken Westboro spot-kick at the far post. Barretto then put Leominster into the lead with an incredibly well-taken penalty, burying it right down the middle.
Both Westboro's Icaro Vieira and Leominster's Leo Budzinski scored to make it 4-3 after four rounds, before Gately looked to be saved, which would have clinched the win for Leominster.
But the referees ruled that Barretto — like many of the goalkeepers had done during the Women's World Cup in France this summer — had come off his line too early to make the save, and Gately was allowed to re-kick.
With this second chance, Gately scored.
But Miller then stepped up and he slotted to the left to lift LHS to the final.
Leominster had difficulty in changing the point of the attack around the hour mark, instead choosing to play more direct football en route to a couple of shots on target. But Westboro didn't, as Vieira headed in a Jeremy James cross from the flank, doubling the Ranger lead, 2-0, in the 67th minute.
But a minute later, Leominster, chasing the game, scored as Christian Godinho drove in and slotted hard beyond a charging Sam Rotman to make it 2-1.
Ten minutes later, Barretto forced extra time as he headed in a vicious indirect free kick from 23 yards, leveling the score at 2-up.
Westboro struck first blood just before the half-hour mark, after Barretto raced off his line and the Rangers put on a slow rolling shot that the Blue Devils cleared off the line.
But the ball went right to Gately, who calmly slotted home to give Westboro a 1-0 lead after 26 minutes.
Nine minutes earlier, the Rangers had a massive opportunity to break the deadlock, as Jackson Barry's cracking header sent Barretto into a dive to the far post.
Up until that point, though, Leominster had controlled the midfield, getting off only one shot on Sam Rotman's goal in the first quarter of an hour.
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Leominster High School
Sean Sweeney