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Eagles fall to Tigers in physical Big South title game

Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm’s Joshua Shaneman handles the ball while defended by Marshall’s Samuel Foster (19) during the Big South Conference Boys Soccer Championship game at New Ulm High School on Tuesday night.

NEW ULM — Despite the New Ulm Eagles outshooting the Marshall Tigers on Tuesday night, it only took one of those shots off the foot of Moo Gay to lift his Tigers to a Big South Conference Boys Soccer Championship win at New Ulm High School.

Gay’s goal came in the 20th minute of play on a pass from Isaiah Argueta. In a physical title game where New Ulm outshot Marshall 12-9 in shots on goal, Gay’s goal was all the Tigers needed offensively.

“I was like, ‘Come prepared,’ and I knew I was going to score,” Gay said. “But at the same time, my hamstring, I’m still injured and I couldn’t go 100%. I wanted to play well, but I couldn’t do it because of my hamstring. But about the goal, I saw it and I know he saw me, that’s why I run through it. If you know my history, I feel it when I ran, but I force it and that’s how we got the goal.”

That might have been all the Tigers needed offensively, but defense and goalkeeping was in high demand also, especially late in the game. In the 63rd minute, Junior Amoah set up Jackson Ocampo with a pass and a chance to score. Ocampo made one defender miss and dribbled past another two before getting in the goal box and making a sliding shot that a sliding Marshall goalie Roberto Garcia Lopez was unable to grab. The shot, however, hit off the post before being cleared out of bounds.

Finding the post was the story of the game for the Eagles, who rushed to get any shot they could get off. When they had another chance in the final few minutes of play, a shot in close by Joshua Shaneman was saved on a diving stop by Garcia Lopez, who covered the ball up.

Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm’s Junior Amoah, right, battles Marshall’s Eh Htoo (20) for the ball during the Big South Conference Boys Soccer Championship game at New Ulm High School on Tuesday night.

“We had our opportunities, it bounced off the goal posts a couple times,” New Ulm head coach Tim Plocher said. “Josh had a phenomenal shot but the goalie just got a hand on it, which he’s a fantastic goalie, too. Props to him. They just got to sneak one past, which is unfortunate, but it is what it is.”

Gay’s first-half goal was charged by New Ulm goalie Jens Quist, who made his share of impressive saves in the game also. Gay just beat Quist to the ball, however, and got his shot to bounce in.

Plocher said one of the biggest things he teaches his players is that it’s not about making mistakes but how they respond to them, something that will be key for New Ulm as it ends the regular season Thursday and prepares for the Section 2AA playoffs.

“The missing the net, I guess that’s a mistake, but how are you going to react to that?” Plocher said. “Am I going to pull you out because you did poorly? No, I trust you. I have those guys in, the guys that are playing, I trust them to make the opportunities available and they did the second half.

“I had a good talk with them at halftime, I said, ‘Hey, we need to step it up, we need to apply some more pressure, we need to play our ball. We’re not going to play the way we did [Monday] against Jordan [a 1-1 tie], we’re going to play our game.’ And we really showed that the second half, we had full ball control. They had a little bit of some stuff sneak through in the back, but we were able to hold them.”

New Ulm (11-3-1) hosts Mankato East on Thursday to end the regular season, while Marshall (12-2-2) will have some time to enjoy its conference title as it awaits Section 2AA playoffs.

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