Boys Soccer: Knights look to knock off Oakdale, take advantage of friendly draw

By Ben Spector
Winning After MidKnight

 

In any tournament, there is always the one team who receives a lucky draw and sees their road to the playoffs get easier with just a simple seeding of a bracket.

For the 2A West region of the 2014 Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletics Association (M.P.S.S.A.A) 2A Boys Soccer Championship that team was the Middletown High School Knights.

The draw worked out in such a way, that barring any stumbles that would have been obvious upsets, the only difficult game would be in the sectional semifinal round against the Oakdale High School Bears.

Both Oakdale and Middletown won their respective sectional quarterfinal matches so now that is the case, as a win for Middletown would put them in a good position to win their section and possibly their region, advancing them into the state semifinals for the first time since 1999.

Middletown knew they would receive a good seed going into draw day on October 20^th but didn’t realize just how beneficial their position would be until the brackets came out later that day.

The opening game would see the Knights matched up against the Catoctin High School Cougars a team who had lost eight straight games going into the playoffs. The road bump versus Oakdale would lie ahead of that if the Bears would defeat the Williamsport High School Wildcats (which they did).

What lies ahead for the Knights is even better, as they will face a win over Oakdale they will either face the Boonsboro High School Warriors, who they beat 4-1 or the Mountain Ridge High School Miners, a team with a record deserving of the #1 seed but a record that was earned by playing small Maryland and eastern West Virginia schools who are nowhere near the quality of most of the Frederick County schools.

Sensing that the road ahead will get exponentially easier after the October 28^th game against Oakdale, the Knights realize the importance of beating Oakdale.

“It definitely feels like that we feel confident in the road ahead if we can win this game,” said Middletown junior goalkeeper Eric Reichelt who has 3 clean sheets in his last 4 starts, all Middletown wins. “We have confidence (to) maybe even make it to states.”

It’s easier to understand why, as pairing the easy road ahead with the Knights’ hot play as of late and the fact that they’ve beaten the current Oakdale team has Middletown swelling with momentum.

“We definitely have momentum,” said Reichelt. “We haven’t lost at home all year and we expect that to continue.”

In the last contest between the two teams, Middletown junior midfielder Jonathan Tatem knocked in a 78^th minute header to give the Knights a 1-0 win over the Bears on October 3^rd.

The first match between these two teams happened early in the season, on September 6^th at the campus of Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Oakdale would take down Middletown 2-0 in the first round of the County Tournament, but that was before two members of Oakdale were kicked off of the team because of possession of drug paraphernalia on a school campus.

Oakdale hasn’t been the same team since the two suspensions rocked the team losing 3 of their last 11 games while before that being undefeated in seven matches.

Middletown will look to use a friendly draw to their advantage and with a win tonight over Oakdale, the Knights – filled with momentum and confidence, will extend their recent run into more titles.