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Sports

Solon Boys Soccer Fights to 0-0 Tie With Rival Twinsburg

Contest featured up and down action between two of the best teams in the area

Let’s face it, goalkeepers in soccer do a lot of standing around, and although they might be roused to action once or twice in a match, they had better make the play when that rousing arrives.

Solon’s 5-foot-10 senior goalkeeper Tommy Koenig met that moment and surpassed it at the end of the Comets’ contest against rival Twinsburg, preserving a 0-0 tie Tuesday in the waning moments of the second half at Tiger Stadium in Twinsburg.

In a contest that featured more dodges and parries than many sword fights, it was Koenig who struck perhaps the biggest blow, denying Tigers forward Chase Betenson’s 10-foot blast in front of the net with 6:49 remaining in the game.

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With the ball bouncing around between a pair of Comets defenders seemingly in search of a foot to kick it, Betenson smashed the ball toward the goal, but it thudded off a diving Koenig. The goalkeeper learned a lesson from a similar incident earlier in the season.

“It was a big part of the game. Against St. Ignatius, in our scrimmage earlier in the season, that’s how they scored and beat us, 1-0. So I’ve been playing it over in my head and making sure something like that can’t happen again to ruin our season,” Koenig said.

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In fact, Koenig frustrated Betenson three straight times with a simpler save that rolled to Koenig right before the big save. Then Betenson sailed a chip shot over Koenig that ended his threats for the evening.

Solon (4-1-2, 0-0-1) and Twinsburg (5-0-2, 0-0-1) each earned a point for the tie in their Northeast Ohio Conference openers.

Despite not scoring and missing several opportunities to do so, Comets boys’ soccer coach Ryan Conner, who has helmed the team for six years, believes it was the team’s best performance of the season given the opponent and the game’s general flow.

“I felt really good about how we played tonight. We didn’t score, but Twinsburg’s very a good team. They’re undefeated. They’re very well coached and very disciplined. We always have a tough time scoring against them. They are very tough to crack,” Conner said.

One of Solon’s best chances came when Scott Welker got in behind the Twinsburg defense briefly in the first half, but Frank Candau, Koenig’s equally stout goalkeeping counterpart for the Tigers, quickly came out of goal and wiped away the chance.

Still, some of those missed chances, though, might leave the Comets wondering what might have been. With 7:20 remaining in the first half, Solon midfielder Jeremy Seaman rolled a shot long along the full length of the goal mouth in front of Candau. But no other Comet came forward to punch in the chance and the ball rolled harmlessly out of bounds for a goal kick.

Also Welker combined with Matt Pekarek and Seaman on a series of nifty passes to move the ball down the field and set up Pekarek, but his header eventually went wide of the mark at 29:10 of the second half.

Still, Conner felt the defense should be credited, too, with helping Koenig keep the shutout.

“We’ve really been working in practice about tightening up our defense. We’ve had some lapses we weren’t happy about in the last couple of games. I just give credit to our guys. They took what we’ve been working on in practice and executed it really well tonight,” Conner said.

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