ALTON - Something had to give.
The Marquette Catholic Explorers and the Columbia Eagles previously played twice in the regular season and split both games. They were evenly matched, and there could only be one winner in the Class 2A Bethalto Regional Championship.
After going up a goal in the first half, the Explorers conceded three unanswered goals to the Eagles and ultimately ran out of time losing 3-2 on Saturday afternoon at the Bethalto Sports Complex.
After coming off a Class 1A state championship and a marvelous regular season, Marquette’s 2018 campaign ends at the first hurdle in the playoffs with a 16-3-4 record.
“Columbia’s a good team every year it seems like. We knew we’d have to face them eventually,” Burchett said. “I’m not disappointed. Surely we’d like to have the regional, but I think we made the parents, the school and our community proud. There’s a lot of positives. We’ll try to rebound next year.”
Columbia, who previously coincidently beat Marquette 3-2 a week and a half ago, move on to play Marion this Tuesday in the Triad sectional semifinals.
“Our message has been to remain focused the entire game regardless of who scores first,” Columbia head coach Jason Mathenia said. “In the previous game, we scored first. This [was] going to be a battle and we had to maintain focus the entire time. [We] could’ve easily gotten our heads down and walked away. These guys didn’t do that; they continued to fight.”
The Explorers came started out playing well, controlling the tempo and were rewarded with a goal by Trenton Dietiker in the 12th minute. Aaron Boulch received a long cross on the edge of the box and chested it down to Dietiker, who volleyed it into the top corner of the net past Alec Venhaus for a terrific goal.
After that, the Eagles flipped the switch and became the main aggressors and their effort paid off. Jonah James lobbed a pass into the box for Karson Bridges, who struck the ball past a charging Nick Hemann to level the score at 1-1 in the 24th minute.
With just under four minutes left in the half, Columbia won a free kick. Charlie Harres put in a pin-point cross to star striker Alex Barton who had a free header and took full advantage of it placing it perfectly into the bottom right corner of the goal to put his team up 2-1.
Despite letting the lead slip away within the first half, Marquette was fully confident of getting a goal back to tie the game and going on to win.
“Belief was never in doubt,” Burchett said. “We’d beaten [Columbia] once already and believed we could win this game. They were hungry to get out and get going again and make up for some of the errors.”
For the first eight minutes, the Explorers, who’ve relied on their midfield play all season was troubling Columbia. They nearly tied it up when Brett Terry collected a deflective pass near the goal, but Venhaus was within a foot of him and saved the shot with his leg.
That would prove vital for the Eagles.
Soon after, Harres made another pass that was awkward for Marquette to deal with, which bounced off a defender, and James charged in to pounce on the loose ball and slotted it low and hard into the net to make it 3-1.
Marquette however, wasn’t fazed.
Thirty-four seconds later they won a corner kick that was delivered in by Stephen Hasse, and Dietiker used his tall frame to his head onto the ball, which found the back of the net. The Explorers got to within 3-2 with 31:14 to play.
For roughly a half-an-hour Marquette peppered Columbia with waves of attacks, but couldn’t ever get the goal they required.
“We knew they had no choice but to come high pressure at us,” Mathenia said. “We know that their strength is in the middle. They got two very good players right up the gut, and everything revolves around them. We didn’t go into panic mode. Yeah, we had to clear some balls out of there, but we still maintained shape. I felt they did a good job of withstanding that pressure.”
The Explorers forced Venhaus into a couple of routine saves, but with just under ten minutes left the best chance of the game fell to star striker, Chris Hartrich. He collected a pass while being barely onside and was temporarily 1-on-1 with Venhaus on top of him. Hartrich turned around and put plenty of power on his shot that was sent over the bar and ruled a corner kick since the referee claimed Venhaus got a fingertip to the ball.
“I thought we had three really good chances, and I still don’t know how Chris doesn’t score there,” Burchett said. “[We] weren’t ready to give up and [we] didn’t think it was over. We talked a lot about is the other team beating us or are we making mistakes that we’re sort of giving away? If we can control our mistakes, decisions, emotions, all of those things then if we lose then it’s because the other team was better.”
Marquette graduates ten seniors who won 59 games in four years and from this past season through the middle of this year; they were part of a 27-game unbeaten run.
“The career of these ten players has been absolutely tremendous. I’m going to miss them,” Burchett said. “This particular class has been phenomenal for the school. I told the younger guys this is what you need to aspire to be like this group of seniors and I hope they do.”
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