The Wright City Wildcats came through in a penalty kick shootout to beat Sullivan Monday.
After battling to a 1-1 tie through the first 80 minutes of regulation and two 10-minute overtime …
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The Wright City Wildcats came through in a penalty kick shootout to beat Sullivan Monday.
After battling to a 1-1 tie through the first 80 minutes of regulation and two 10-minute overtime periods, Wright City outscored Sullivan 4-3 in the shootout to earn a 2-1 win. Senior Nate Bowman connected on the final goal in the shootout to give Wright City the win.
“I’ve done it before,” Bowman said. “I’ve done it in multiple tournaments and other games here. I just scored one the last game we played. I came up to him, I told him that I wanted to go fifth just in case, all pressure was on me. I don’t really want it on anyone else. It was just in my mind, I didn’t feel nervous, just confident.”
Laith Abualzuluf, Jonathan Windmann and AJ Simon also scored goals for Wright City in the penalty shootout. Keagan Loeffler’s shot was stopped on his attempt in the shootout.
“There’s always that one that tries to blast it down the middle and do something fancy and it doesn’t need to happen that way,” Wright City boys soccer coach Josh Albregts said. “It just needs to be one of those things where you pick a side you go to, it’s win or lose. It’s 50-50. It feels good to get the win though, even though it was through PKs.”
Wright City goalie Drew Elsenrath allowed three goals in five attempts in the penalty shootout. He stopped Zechariah Beagle’s attempt on the second penalty shot. Reed Newbank’s shot with the shootout tied 3-3 hit the crossbar and gave Bowman the chance to win the game for the Wildcats.
Elsenrath logged 27 saves in the game, including multiple saves in the second overtime to keep the game tied 1-1.
“Drew was the wall,” Albregts said. “He didn’t necessarily have great support. There’s a few times that he just got lucky with the deflection and it rolled up his shoulder and it went off. And it’s all that we can do.”
Wright City scored first to take the lead in the 25th minute. Loeffler scored off of Bowman’s pass to give the Wildcats the lead.
“I tried it once and I played a really bad ball. But the space was always there,” Bowman said. “So I just did it one more time and he was there and was able to tap it in and we scored.”
Sullivan scored with under three minutes remaining in the first half to even the game at 1-1. Both teams had scoring chances in the second half and overtime periods but were unable to score.
“We trained for this coming into the summer, coming into the fall and everything,” Albregts said. “We condition a lot and everything. That’s what this comes down to is the conditioning part of it. I make sure that we’re not going to lose because we’re not conditioned and I make sure and keep it that way.”
