Saxony soccer captures its first district title

MANCHESTER -- Saxony Lutheran's third-year boys soccer program has its first district championship.

Andrew Etzold scored two goals and goalkeeper Bryant Steffens recorded the shutout in the Crusaders' 2-0 win against top-seeded host Kennedy on Friday night in the Class 1 District 1 title game.

"This is my first time," Saxony Lutheran coach Ryan Schweain said, "so I'm pretty pumped about it."

Schweain was a member of three district runner-up teams at Jackson High School. And the Crusaders fell 1-0 to Festus St. Pius in the district final last year.

They advanced to Thursday's Class 1 quarterfinal tilt, scheduled for 5 p.m. at the Anheuser-Busch Center in Fenton.

Saxony (19-7) dodged Kennedy's early attacks in the first 10 minutes before getting the better of the play. The Crusaders broke through with 3:09 remaining in the first half.

Senior Garrett Fritsche sent a throw-in into the box and the ball came back to him on the left side. He took it toward the end line and crossed to Etzold.

"I was just going to put it back in, but it was bouncing too much," Fritsche said. "The guy just dove in, so I drove around him. I just crossed it right to him, and he was there waiting.

"We work on that just about every practice because coach says when we get to the goal line, we have to cross it in. He was ready for it."

The Crusaders altered their formation to play a little more defensively in the second half, but Kennedy did take two solid shots at Steffens. Both were in some way set up by senior Vince Sciore, who came in with team-leading totals of 11 goals and 10 assists for the Celts (18-6), who had won 11 of their last 13, including a split with Class 2 power St. Dominic.

Shortly after Saxony had taken its seventh corner kick, Sciore led a counter-attack and found Tony Luedecke for an open shot from 10 yards out. But the shot was right at Steffens, who caught it cleanly.

A minute later, Sciore was fouled and the Celts had another chance, but Steffens deflected the shot by Luedecke wide and Saxony cleared it.

"He had a couple of incredible saves," Schweain said. "If I could count them for 20 saves, I would."

"He was amazing," Fritsche said. "He's played his heart out all year and it definitely shows."

Steffens gave credit to his defense, particularly sophomore Shawn Hadler's work against Sciore.

"I was hoping our team would contain him especially," Steffens said. "I have to give a lot of credit to Shawn for keeping him on the outside and not letting him get in the middle."

Schweain didn't let his team watch Kennedy play during the week, and the teams had not met this season.

"They're a good team," Schweain said. "[Sciore] is one of the better players we've played against this year. We knew it coming in and our defense played awesome tonight."

Saxony finished the game with a 9-4 advantage in corner kicks after yielding two in the first 10 minutes.

The Crusaders kept the pressure until the end, and when Kennedy failed to clear the ball out of its end, Etzold attacked and got past keeper Tommy Campbell to score the insurance goal in the 79th minute.

"This was a big win," Steffens said. "It feels great to get our first district win."