Still kicking: Charleroi to play for WPIAL boys soccer title
McMURRAY – The Charleroi High School boys soccer program has taken significant steps during head coach coach John Ducoli’s tenure.
Tuesday night, the Cougars took the next step, their biggest yet, as they defeated Eden Christian, 1-0, at Peters Township Middle School to advance to the WPIAL Class A finals.
“It seems to be a reoccurring theme of getting over humps,” Ducoli said. “We had the hump of not being able to get out of the first round, but we conquered that.
“Then we had made the finals twice in the last four years, but now we are over that hump. But there is still work to do to accomplish our goal of winning a WPIAL championship.”
Charleroi (17-2) will play Winchester Thurston, a 4-3 winner over Sewickley Academy, on Friday night (8 p.m.) at Highmark Stadium for the WPIAL championship.
The Cougars used a stifling defense in front of goalkeeper Nate Mizon and Ducoli spoke about the play of the quartet of defenders in Jake Chambers, Ty Patterson, Gage Patterson and Braden Pringle, who were key to the win over Eden Christian.
“They are solid,” he said. “Jake anchors our defense, Pringle does his role and the Patterson’s are on the outside. We are so versatile and able to slide into gaps.”
Arlo McIntyre scored the only goal of the match when he broke the scoreless tie with 11:20 to go in the first half.
Chambers took a shot from outside and McIntyre played a rebound and beat Eden goalkeeper Anthony D’Ippolito.
“Jake took the shot and coach told us to follow up and I tapped it in,” the junior said. “My instinct was to get the ball in.
“This win mean everything, I am so proud of the team, but we still have much work to do.
“The boys played a complete 80 minutes and knew coming in we would be facing a good opponent as teams don’t make it this far without being good. The boys will enjoy this win tonight, but we go back to the drawing board tomorrow and get to work.”
If Charleroi wins its first WPIAL boys soccer championship, then it will have defeated private schools in three straight rounds, and Ducoli has pride in his team from the 15022 zip code.
“We are the last public school standing and I take pride in that,” Ducoli said. “Our guys work hard for us, and we are able to compete because of their effort and desire.”