Franklin players celebrate after beating Columbus East in a sectional match on Tuesday evening.
Mike Wolanin | For the Daily Journal
COLUMBUS
When Columbus East played Franklin on Sept. 12, the Olympians’ Martin Simon Rodriguez scored four goals in a 4-1 East victory.
The teams met on the same field again Tuesday night, and this time, the Grizzly Cubs rarely let Simon Rodriguez touch the ball. Franklin used late goal to post a 1-0 win in the opening round of the Class 3A Columbus North Sectional.
“We’ve gotten so much better defensively the last couple weeks,” Franklin coach Tony Harris said. “We were working on some things midseason, and we kind of let them counter us all night long (in the earlier matchup). So we knew we had to stop their counterattack. We did a nice job on (Simon Rodriguez). He’s a tremendous player. We made sure of what we couldn’t get beat with, and we felt like we could defend what else they had.”
In the second match of the night, Greenwood saw its season come to an end with a 7-1 loss to the host Bull Dogs.
In the 77th minute of the opener, Ethan Elsner lined up for a free kick from the left side about 25 yards out and put it over the head of East goalkeeper August Comer into the right side of the net.
“I saw J.D. (Sever) and Zach (Newton), and I was thinking about crossing it to them or shooting it because I saw (Comer) was off his line a little bit,” Elsner said. “So I just decided to take it and see what happens, and luckily, it went in.”
Elsner also was instrumental in helping keep Simon Rodriguez under wraps.
“We just played a lot harder and marked our guys, kept (Simon Rodriguez) under control the whole game,” Elsner said. “He’s a great player, the best we’ve seen in a long time. We really stayed on him hard and forced him to get off his game. We did a great job as a team playing together, seeing the field better.”
The Olympians (5-7-3) had the run of play in the first half, outshooting the Grizzly Cubs 4-1. East’s Gui Silva Coelho put one off the left post in the 38th minute.
Franklin had most of the opportunites in the second half. Comer came up with a couple of saves on point-blank shots, and defender Justin Sylva cleared a ball off the goal line after it had bounced over Comer’s head.
“We’d have liked to score more goals,” Harris said. “We had so many chances in the box. But we got the one, and that’s all we neeeded.”
The Grizzly Cubs finished with an 11-8 shot advantage, putting five shots on goal to three for East. Franklin’s Adam Ott recorded three saves.
“All credit to them,” East coach Josh Gonsior said. “They showed up to play today, and we picked the wrong time to not show up. They played really hard like they wanted to win it, and we kind of sat back and weren’t aggressive and didn’t take the game to them. That was the difference today.
“Sometimes, one of the most difficult things to do is play a team you’ve already beat,” he added. “That mentality has to be different the second time around, and it’s unfortunate that’s how it is, but that’s why we play the game. We didn’t put it all together today, and unfortunately, you do that in the tournament, you go home.”
In the nightcap, the Woodmen put an early scare into No. 10 Columbus North, tying the score at 1-1 in the 23rd minute when Fabian Martin scored on a header. But the Bull Dogs controlled play from there, cashing in repeatedly on its 22-6 advantage in shots. The Woodmen (8-7-1) managed just four shots on goal to North’s 14.
The Grizzly Cubs (13-2-1) will play the Bull Dogs in the 8 p.m. semifinal match tonight.
“North is a different beast,” Harris said. “We’re going to have to come prepared ready to go. We’re going to come out here and play our best soccer and see what happens. We lost to them in the finals last year, 3-1. We were right there with them. We know we can play with them. But can we beat them? That’s going to be the question.”
By Ted Schultz of The (Columbus) Republic, a sister newspaper of the Daily Journal.
