(PHOTO COURTESY OF GCA)
Editor
Greenwood Christian Academy’s boys’ soccer season came to a dramatic and heartbreaking end on a blustery Saturday afternoon in the Evansville North Class A IHSAA Semistate championship.
The No. 6 Cougars fell to Forest Park in a shootout after a scoreless deadlock through regulation play and overtime. GCA finishes the season with a 15-5 record.
The Rangers won on a successful fifth kick to end the thriller. One week earlier, the Cougars won the Knightstown Regional in the same manner against Oldenburg Academy.
‘We had our chances; it just wasn’t our day,” first-year coach Steve Campbell observed. “We just needed one big play, that’s all.”
However, Campbell could not fault the Cougars for a successful season that ended too early.
He contended that the season’s turning point came in their first match against top-ranked Covenant Christian. GCA lost the match 3-0 but Campbell saw a lot that he liked from the young Cougars who graduated seven seniors from last year’s Class A state tournament runners-up.
“I saw the potential that we had,” Campbell said. “I was confident we could correct all the things we needed – the technical aspects, our first touches, pressure, and working in open space or working better as a team.
I told them that they (Covenant Christian) would improve a little, but that we were going to improve a lot. It just took a while for our players to build their trust in each other.”
After three more matches, the Cougars launched a nine-game winning streak.
“They really believed in themselves,” Campbell recalled during a recent interview. “We had a younger team than last year’s team, but they play very mature.”
GCA showed its improvement early in the season when they faced nemesis Park Tudor, the team that dominated the Cougars 9-0 in the 2022 IHSAA Class A state championship game at IUPUI’s Carroll Stadium.
Cougars shut out Park Tudor, 1-0, for their fifth win in a nine-game winning streak.
“We had the revenge factor going for us in September,” said Campbell, who completed his first season at the Cougar’s helm. In the regional, the Cougars defeated two teams ranked among the top seven in Class A.
Trey Dobson scored the winning goal against Covenant Christian at Knightstown. Junior Caden Camden scored the only goal in regulation, and senior goalkeeper Colton Flint added to his program record saves by stopping CC’s final kick. Going into the semistate, Flint had 575 career saves as a four-year starter.
Dobson, GCA’s standout quarterback on the Cougars football team, played the night before in Michigan, returned home with the Cougars squad, and traveled to Knightstown for the regional championship game as a key soccer team player. Dobson and teammate Mason Wright doubled as football and soccer players this fall.
“We were excited to finally have them for a full week of uninterrupted soccer practice,” Campbell grinned.
Sizing up the Cougars, Campbell explained, “We only have two (Bo Campbell and Caleb Amador) who have played a high level of club soccer. We don’t have a big feeder system like the teams on the northside. Most have never played club soccer, but they are athletes and this team has achieved above and beyond their expectations. They developed some fantastic chemistry.”
GCA’s seniors include Flint, Wright, left wing Caleb Schmidt, right fullback Carmine Mina, center fullbacks Drew Adams and Xander Honeycutt, and fullback Elijah Herndon.
Sophomore Bo Campbell was the team’s leading scorer. Amador is only a freshman but has a mature game. Rounding out the Cougars are Carson Boyce, Luke McNichols, Carmine Mina, Sean Nolan, Aiden Patino, and backup goalie Preston Van Til.
This was Campbell’s first year at the helm but has years of soccer knowledge as the director of the Franciscan Soccer Club, overseeing more than 2,000 young players year-round on the Southside. Carson Dillard served as Campbell’s assistant at GCA.