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ALTON – One of the better Class 2A soccer schools in Illinois – Dunlap – came down to Gordon Moore Park over the weekend to take on three Metro East-area teams in the Alton Round-Robin Tournament.
The Eagles emerged victorious in the tournament, just only just, edging out the Tigers on the goals-allowed tiebreaker as both teams went 1-0-2 in the tournament; Dunlap conceded two goals to the Tigers' three.
Edwardsville and Dunlap settled for a scoreless draw in Friday's opening match, then the Tigers and Triad battled to a 3-3 draw on Saturday morning before defeating the host Redbirds 3-0 Saturday evening. Alton defeated Triad 4-2 on Friday night before drawing with Dunlap 2-2 Saturday morning; the Eagles defeated the Knights 2-0 in the early Saturday evening match prior to the Tiger-Redbird clash.
Both Dunlap and Edwardsville finished with 1-0-2 marks for four points (teams earned two points for a win and one point each for a draw), with the Redbirds finishing 1-1-1 for three points and Triad 0-2-1 for one point.
“Dunlap was impressive,” said Tiger coach Mark Heiderschied. “They looked great the entire tournament; they take on some pretty big schools in their area like Peoria Notre Dame and do well against them.”
Saturday's matches were kind of a contrast; the Tigers lost a player after he was sent off in the second half against Triad, forcing them to finish the match with 10 players. “We went down early in the match and had to battle back,” Heiderschied said. “We had the misfortune to lose a player on a red card and Triad was just a bit better prepared than we were.
“They put a lot of pressure on us, but we managed to get the tying goal. We had a long talk about what happened between games and came out and played well against Alton; Alton did a lot of good things but we got some good chances and finished three of them.”
Against Triad, Brendan Hentz, Bayne Noll and Austin Toby (who scored in the dying moments of the match) had goals, while against the Redbirds, Toby, Max Kieffer and Bryce Glisson all scored. Dan Picchiotti earned the clean sheet for the Tigers in the finale after replacing Trey Riley, who had been sent off in the Triad match.
For the Redbirds, Eric Ferenbach had all four goals in their opener against Triad Friday night, two of them coming on first-half penalty kicks. In Saturday's draw against Dunlap, Nick Hatfield had both goals in their draw against the Eagles.
Both teams return to the pitch for Southwestern Conference games Tuesday; Edwardsville goes to Belleville East for a 6:45 p.m. kickoff, while Alton travels to Gene Baker Field in Granite City for a 7 p.m. match.
Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
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