After a 10-0 mercy rule win the night before on Saturday, April 20, Millard West headed over to Buell Stadium to take on Q Street rival Millard South, in the Millard South Invitational Championship.
Millard West came into this game riding a five game winning streak and playing some of their best soccer they have all year. With two games left in the regular season winning out would practically guarantee Millard West the right to host Districts. Millard South was sitting at a 7-7 record looking to grab as many wins as possible down the stretch of the season to boost their position in district standings.
The game would start out strong for the Wildcats as they would control the flow and momentum of the game allowing them to multiply different scoring opportunities.
During one of these attacking attempts Millard West would get fouled in the box to set up a penalty shot with a chance to take the lead. Due to the penalty on the goal keeper Millard South would have to send in sophomore goalkeeper Mario Lam to attempt to save the penalty.
With the game tied sophomore Diego Zapata would step up to take the penalty, the kick would get saved but the keeper was off his line and the penalty kick would have to be redone. This time Zapata would place it around the keeper and give Millard West a 1-0 lead midway through the first half.
Millard South would then start to use their either advantage to control the ball of headers in the air and establish their own scoring opportunities. Late in the first half after a miscommunication between senior goalkeeper Gabe Griffiths and his defenders Millard south would pot one in the back of the net to take it to 1-1 at halftime.
Neither team would be able to grab any significant advantage, as possession would be short with the ball constantly changing sides and control. Both teams would get a couple scoring chances but defenses would step up and shot down all scoring taking the game to a 1-1 tie after full time.
Millard South would jump out strong in the first half of overtime and control the ball by giving themselves a lot of shots and scoring opportunities however the Wildcat and defense and keeper Griffiths would stop anything from going keeping the game at 1-1 at overtime halftime.
The second half of overtime would practically be the same thing as the first and despite another set of quality scoring chances for the Patriots the Wildcats defense would hold strong the game would lead to PKs.
Despite the Wildcats being a strong PK team the Patriots would grab the lead early and with one kick left for each team Millard South was up 3-2. Millard South had the first kick and Griffiths would come up huge with the stop to give West a chance to force sudden death. After making the save Griffiths would step up to take the penalty, beat the goalie and take the game into sudden death PKs. The teams would then trade miss for miss and make for make and after 11 penalty kicks by both teams they were still tied and 8 makes each. Griffiths would make another great save on kick #12 setting up senior Brennan Tubaugh with a chance to win the game. Tubaugh would come through huge, making the final shot and giving Millard West the victory, and the Millard South Invitational Championship.
The team would also find and way to beat Omaha South two days later and are set to host District A-5.
