Kicks, MVP keeper are Wood River’s winning weapons

One goal meant everything when Wood River High School and Weiser played for the championship of the 1998 State A-2 boys’ soccer tournament on a balmy Saturday afternoon at Nampa’s Liberty Park.

But nobody got it in 110 minutes of fierce, defensive, scoreless soccer that included two 10-minute nailbiting overtimes. Weiser, outshooting Wood River 23-9, threw everything but the kitchen sink at Wood River junior goalkeeper Charlie Askew.

"You just couldn’t ask for a better final game, regardless of the outcome," said Wood River coach Brian Daluiso.

Askew was awesome—catching corner kick after corner kick, stopping two breakaways that were truly frightening on Halloween and making one astounding kick save worthy of Patrick Roy. In four state tournament games at Nampa and 380 minutes, he allowed just one goal.

He even stopped a hair-raising Weiser penalty kick three minutes into the first overtime—preserving his seventh shutout of the season.

The outcome of the state championship went down to penalty kicks, similar to last year when Weiser defeated Minico 2-1 for its first-ever State A-3 championship. But with Askew in the net and four cool customers making their kicks, Wood River couldn't be denied in 1998.

Shooting first and shooting low, senior Alex McLaughlin, junior Chad Cleveland and sophomore Jason Southward drilled their kicks into the net, putting Wood River up 3-0. Weiser’s first kicker hit the post and Askew dove right to stop the second shot. Weiser’s Johannes Gibson finally found a corner and it was 3-1.

Wood River senior co-captain Josh Keefer stepped to the line, needing only to score for the state championship. Moments earlier, in OT, Keefer’s foul had caused the penalty kick that Askew had subsequently stopped. Keefer returned the favor so Askew wouldn’t be challenged again.

In dead silence Keefer shot. And he scored! Gravitational pull and sheer happiness brought every Wood River player, coach and countless spectators into a joyous, jumping and hugging pile.

It was Wood River’s first state boys’ soccer championship, indeed, the first state championship ever for a Wood River boys’ athletic team.

And Askew, by acclamation, was voted state tournament Most Valuable Player.

"Defense wins championships," said Daluiso, whose 10-2-3 team went 3-0-1 at state and prevailed despite scoring only 2 goals in its final three games.

He added, "Charlie will always play well but he was amazing in the final game. Of all the teams we’ve seen, there was no better back line on defense than Alex McLaughlin, Jacob Risner and Justin Nelson."

To reach the final, Wood River beat a pair of top-seeded teams, Lewiston 4-0 Thursday and Blackfoot 1-0 Friday. Needing only one goal to advance to the championship game, Keefer provided it with a free kick early in Friday’s 1-1 tie with host team Skyview of Nampa.

But Wood River’s path to the title actually began Oct. 20, in Rupert, when the Wolverines played miserably in a 3-1 loss to Minico that ended the regular-season slate.

Road to the championship

"After Minico, we sat the guys down and what I told them was, we knew they had the skills to win the state tournament. The question was whether they had the heart and desire," said Daluiso, who is helped by co-coach Craig Roth.

Daluiso said, "Ten minutes after the Minico game we had a difficult time telling whether we had won or lost.

"The highs, the lows, the complacency—we’ve been fighting it all year. We saw it coming on the bus ride down to Burley, and we tied them 1-1. When we played The Community School up there, you could tell which was the better team in the first half, and it wasn’t us.

"But we really came together as a team at state. We were real pleased."

Wood River’s fitness level, the one single thing the coaches had been hammering home all season, was a major factor in the 4-0 Wolverine victory over Lewiston Thursday. "Josh Keefer really had an amazing game. He got everyone involved," said Roth afterward.

Four different players scored starting with Keefer, who collected a 45-yard through ball from junior midfielder James Cordes and made it 1-0 just four minutes into the game. At 30 minutes, junior Graham Watanabe carried the ball down the field and beat the Lewiston goalkeeper, 2-0.

In the 76th minute, junior Chad Cleveland passed to Southward, who scored his team-leading 10th goal. In the 83rd minute, sophomore Jess Kiesel left-footed a cross that sophomore Mike Spaulding headed home for the 4-0 final score. "It was by far our prettiest goal," said Roth.

Friday morning, Wood River faced off against Blackfoot, "one of the top teams in the tournament," Roth said. Blackfoot had beaten Wood River 4-2 in an early-season friendly match, a result that had shocked a Wolverine team that was feeling pretty good about itself after last year’s fourth-place state tournament finish.

This time, Wood River won 1-0. Roth said, "We won because our defense played well—holding them to three or four scoring chances, which was pretty good. We won because we were opportunistic. We had one really good scoring opportunity and capitalized on that."

At 41 minutes, Southward made a good run down the left wing setting the stage for a Wolverine throw-in.

The ball went to junior wing Charlie Parker, who crossed a pass into the box. Meanwhile, Cordes quietly snuck between two Blackfoot defenders. Parker’s pass bounced once. Cordes came under it and headed it softly past the onrushing keeper. It made it across the line for a big goal.

Large as the 1-0 lead seemed, it grew more and more precarious as Blackfoot used the wind to pin the ball down in Wood River’s end for virtually the entire second half.

Daluiso said, "Starting with the Blackfoot game and continuing for our last three games, we did a lot of bunkering in, which was a little scary."

But the Wolverine defense led by the backchecking hustle of stopper Cleveland got the job done for a second straight shutout. "Blackfoot outshot us 11-5 and Charlie had to make 7 saves, and their keeper made only one. We were real excited to have a win, and excited not to have to play Blackfoot again," said Roth.

The Wood River coaches did their tiebreaker mathematics in the two hours between the Blackfoot game and their final round-robin contest against Skyview. They figured that the Wolverines, win or lose, would need to score only one goal against Skyview to advance into Saturday’s championship.

Nonetheless to keep Wood River’s motivation at a high pitch they didn’t explain it to the boys that way. "We told them we needed a tie or win against Skyview," said Roth.

They got the goal early, on their first shot. Keefer nailed a 30-yard free kick high over the Nampa keeper’s leap at nine minutes. The halftime score could have been 3-0 because Cordes and Watanabe had fine chances that just went wide. The Wolverines outshot Skyview 8-4 in the first 45 minutes.

Keefer (bruised quad) gave Wood River a pre-Halloween scare when he spilled over the Skyview keeper and landed hard on an offsides call midway through the first half. He sat the rest of the game and was questionable for Saturday.

Meantime, Askew finished with 9 saves but made his only mistake of the tournament when he misjudged a Skyview indirect kick at 88 minutes, and Skyview scored on a header.

Weary, the Wood River boys headed back to the hotel knowing their school was in the state championship game for the first time in 11 years. Daluiso and Roth then scouted Weiser’s 3-2 victory over Twin Falls and learned one important thing: Weiser’s defense was quick and tough, but their tall freshman goalie could be beaten low.

The bus ride to the title game Saturday was deathly silent.

Daluiso said, "We told the guys we really had nothing to lose. We had already achieved second place, at least. A lot of people thought Weiser would mop up against us—their group was the tougher of the two at state, and they had beaten a Twin Falls team that had soundly beaten us 2-0 at Twin Falls earlier in October."

Weiser’s defense was clearly the equal of Wood River. "We have some fast guys like Mike Spaulding and James Cordes, and we just couldn’t get around them. Weiser’s defense was incredible," Daluiso said.

In the second half Weiser stepped up into Wood River’s passing lanes and totally took away Hailey’s ball control offense. Time after time, Weiser attacked, Askew made the save and then Weiser started building another solid scoring chance at the midfield stripe.

Daluiso said, "We weren’t generating anything on offense in the second half. Chad Cleveland had a big rip from the outside, a real good chance, but that was it.

"But Charlie wasn’t afraid to take charge. When the chips were down, the more aggressive he became. He took chances. Without hesitation, he attacked the ball every time.

"Some of the height he got on Weiser’s corner kicks was incredible. He stuffed two breakaways, coming out and attacking when Weiser sent someone on a through ball, like the kind they scored on when they beat Twin Falls."

At 65 minutes, Askew came up huge on Weiser’s best chance, somehow shooting out his left leg like a hockey goalie and deflecting a shot that was headed for the corner of the net. And, three minutes into the first overtime, Askew calmly caught Fernie Sosa’s penalty kick attempt.

"Hey, we wanted it to go to penalty kicks," said Daluiso.

"With three minutes left in the second overtime, we were telling our players to clear the ball and kill the clock, especially with the game Charlie was having.

"In a sense, we were betting our success on Charlie. But in penalty kicks, Weiser’s defense wasn’t a part of it anymore. They were off the field. It was the one point in the game when I actually calmed down a little on the sideline. Amazingly enough, we were confident.

"We had seen Weiser’s goalie. He couldn’t move well, and anything low he couldn’t stop. We told our kids to shoot it low. And they did."

"You know, the thing is we didn’t have any real stars out there. All these other teams we played had amazing, scary ballhandlers, but if those players broke down, their entire team broke down. Sure, we had our moments when we’d get on each other, but we had no ballhogs and no hotheads. We had lots of good skills, but we were a real team."

Watanabe, Keefer and Askew made the All-Tournament team, but defenders McLaughlin and Risner could easily have made the select team, too, Daluiso said. "And Chad Cleveland was everywhere," he said.

For the season, Wood River scored 34 goals and allowed 15 goals in 15 games. Southward finished with 11 goals, Keefer 5, Cordes 5, Spaulding 3, Thayne Rolf 3, Watanabe 2, Trevor Brown 1, Parker 1, Josh Smart 1, McLaughlin 1 and Cleveland 1.