Defending state champ end Colonel's record run

AMERICAN CORNER — Dillon Shaheen had a plan when he took over as Colonel Richardson High’s boys head soccer coach five years ago.

“My goal was to change the connotation of Colonel soccer,” Shaheen said. “Like, ‘hey, we’re going to play hard and we’re going play well.’”

The Colonels used that combination to reach a new peak this season with a program-record 12 wins that included a first-ever regional championship. That record run ended Saturday night, as two-time defending Class 1A state champion Liberty defeated second-seeded Colonel 2-0 in a 1A state quarterfinal.

The No. 7 seed Lions (8-6-1) advance to Saturday’s state semifinals, where they will face sixth-seeded Brunswick (10-4) at Laurel High School at 5 p.m.

“I told them this wasn’t the ending we wanted,” Shaheen said of Colonel’s 12-3 season. “But when they look back on this season they should do it with a smile on their face because we’ve never had a season like this before.

“We were talking to all the seniors, and they have beaten every single 2A school (in the North Bayside) over the last three years that we have come across, which I don’t think has ever happened for an individual player.”

North Region II-champion Liberty, which won a coin flip with Crisfield to land the seventh seed, got the game’s first solid shot on goal that Colonel keeper Jamie Mensonides hit the ground to stop in the seventh minute.

Colonel responded just 2 minutes later, as Anthonny Gomez crushed a quality shot from about 20 yards out on right wing that Lions freshman goalie Mason Mussaw stopped.

“If that goal goes in it’s a longer night,” Liberty head coach Donnie Kwedar said of Gomez’ initial blast. “They did exactly what they should have done I believe.

“I thought they were tactically sound,” Kwedar said of Colonel. “They had good strategy. They had I think number 12 (Gomez) and number two (John Beaven) and number 9 (Josiah Sagesse) that supported that middle. And they had a very good strategy of playing the ball into those guys, and one feeding the other with a turn and shot. And they were very capable.”

Three consecutive Colonel corner kicks, produced one quality shot, when Beaven sent a header over the crossbar.

“We didn’t capitalize on our chances, and we had a good amount of chances,” Shaheen said.

Liberty’s Tyler Jacobs then launched a throw-in that bounced near the far post and caromed off players before teammate Aaron Williams tucked the ball into the right side of the net for a 1-0 Lions lead with 26:49 remaining in the first half.

“It definitely got their momentum going,” Shaheen said of Williams’ goal. “You could kind of tell the game shifted a little bit. They started putting a lot of pressure on us.”

Mensonides stopped a hard grounder off the foot of Ryan Clapper midway through the first, then watched Clapper feed Jimmy Harkness, who fired wide left with 16 minutes left before halftime.

Sagesse then put a shot off the crossbar with less than 12 minutes remaining in the half.

Kwedar emphasized not to let Sagesse and Gomez turn and shoot in the second half, and for the most part Liberty responded by limiting two of Colonel’s top scoring threats.

“The main thing was on a tough field like this, where it just bounces everywhere, and it’s muddy, slippery, you just want to make sure that we play everything in front of us, because bad bounces, you lose the ball pretty easily,” Kwedar said of Colonel’s field which had been saturated by Friday’s rain. “Bad bounces could turn over really fast. And a striker’s dream is to have a ball bouncing with him down the field. So we wanted to make sure that we stay behind the ball, that everything is forward, and nothing risky in the back.”

Liberty pushed its lead to 2-0 in the fifth minute of the second half, when Caleb Sederquist hit a hard shot that bounced off a Colonel back and into the the left corner for an own goal.

“They adjusted well and we tried our best,” Shaheen said of Liberty clamping down defensively in the second half. “But being down 1-0 at half, and then quickly going into the second half we had that own goal, kind of slows things down a little bit.”

Menosides kept it a two-goal difference, charging off his line to beat Sederquist to a ball at the top of the box with 23:16 left before intercepting a cross a little over a minute later.

Colonel mounted only a few offensive threats the rest of the way, though Regyn Spence put a ball on net with 5:25 remaining that Mussaw handled.

“I think we played as tough as we could,” Kwedar said. “Our defense did really, really well. I think the guy (Sagesse) got some good looks, but we did our job the best we could tonight, and it was good enough obviously.”