On Tuesday, February 12, Jesuit secured a domineering, but modest win, in the first round of Section playoffs against Gregori High School. Jesuit came out looking pretty stellar, with one of their better performances of the season to start out the game. Gregori looked pretty on top of their game too, but only enough to not get scored on much; they didn’t have enough firepower to make a lot of fantastic offensive plays. Jesuit would go on attacking runs and often get stopped out by an unlucky break or good Gregori defense, and on the other hand the visiting team had basically no big chances and didn’t make it too far into the Jesuit half. They would over-milk the middle of the pitch, and their predictable runs would get clogged easily by the Jesuit defense. They were either unable to or unaware of their ability to make moves down the side of the field. In the 24th minute, Elijah Beverley let off a ball to Matthew Kahn and with a dangerous amount of time, Matt took it up a bit and then finally released a nice shot. The shot looked like it was going wide, but in a complete horizontal change of direction it managed to get close enough to the goal to hit the post and make its way barely into the back of the net. The home team was now relieved and definitely on the front foot. The rest of the half continued with the same tone, Gregori getting in just enough defense to keep any more Jesuit goals out and Jesuit holding much of the possession in the enemy half and completely stuffing Gregori in their efforts.

Half Jesuit 1-0 Gregori

Jesuit came out in the second half very motivated to back up a strong first half. This half had a similar pattern to the first 40 minutes, with the game being pretty back-and-forth and deadlocked, as Jesuit still had much of the possession and kept it in the Gregori half, and Gregori had some nice tries at offensive breakthroughs but didn’t really have any real ones. Jesuit was being more free with their attacking and tried for more flair, but at the same time more critical finishes, but for a long time they were turned up short. On the other side of things, though, Jesuit was a lot lazier on defense and even had a lot more dangerous plays on the defense. Gregori got close to scoring a couple of times later in the second half, not through their own aggressiveness and pushing through but more from Jesuit’s sloppiness and freeness in that area of the field. With about 8 minutes left, the visiting offense got as close as possible to tying up the game when defender Ryan Garvey, though a valiant effort at blocking the ball away, headed the ball backwards into the crossbar of his own goal and barely off. This slight mistake was quickly forgotten and Jesuit got back to business, though. In the 80th minute, a couple minutes before the final whistle, Chris Meyers took the ball himself quickly and expertly like usual, and after only a small pause nailed a high across-the-goal left-footed thudder that spun perfectly to a stop in the back of the net. Meyers fixed his season-long problem of taking too long to shoot the ball in the most key moment. The game finished 2-0 to Jesuit, over a respectable Gregori that will come back stronger in the future. The victors move onto the second round of playoffs against Tokay High School, which will be played at Jesuit on Thursday, February 14.

submitted by Gage Biery ‘20