By Stan Caldwell
stanmansportsfan.com
SUMRALL – The tears and stunned looks said it all for the Sumrall boys.
The Bobcats saw their season come to an end in the cruelest way possible Monday night in the second round of the MHSAA Class 4A soccer playoffs Monday night at Lions Field.
Bay High scored two goals a minute apart in second-half stoppage time to literally snatch a 3-2 victory from Sumrall’s grasp.
Instead of celebrating a big upset and a chance for a South State championship, Sumrall (8-11-2) is packing the gear while the Tigers (15-5-2) await the winner of Tuesday’s Stone at Poplarville game to determine where they play in the next round.
“It is tough,” said first-year Sumrall coach Jared Lee.
The Bobcats lost in as wild a final 10 minutes as you’re ever likely to see on the soccer pitch. Sumrall took a 2-1 lead in the 79th minute of play on a sizzling free kick by senior Barrett Breazeale only to see Bay High rally in stoppage time.
“We knew coming in that they were going to be dangerous on set pieces, in particular corners, because of the height they possess,” said Lee.
“They say the most dangerous time of the game is right after you score, when you lose a little bit of focus, and that’s what happened to us tonight.”
The Bobcats truly deserved better. Lee learned some things from an earlier meeting on January 7 at Bay St. Louis, a 6-2 Tiger victory, and he applied them in this one.
Sumrall played a sound four-man back line that came under intense pressure for much of the game.
“Our back line is the biggest part of our game,” said sophomore center back Marlon Huddleston. “In practice, we go in every day and work on defense. We build from the back, we work on our clearances and corners, and set up the offense.”
In the front end, the Bobcats were conservative with their attacks, but they picked some opportune moments to strike and one of those moments turned the game in Sumrall’s favor.
Playing back on their heels for much of the game’s first 18 minutes, the Bobcats mounted a counterattack that resulted in a corner kick from the left side. That came just after sophomore Aiden Boudro missed a wide-open net with a shot over the crossbar for Bay High.
“They put us under a lot of pressure,” said Lee. “That’s the strong part of their game. Their central midfielder (Boudro), a tall fellow, and their two wingers are very strong players.
“They play very direct, so we knew we had to squeeze in and protect the middle of the field and deny that space in the middle, or at least force them out wide and make them cross the ball, which we did very well.”
Breazeale put the kick on goal, and sophomore defender Avery Harris slapped the ball out of the net with his hand to prevent the goal. Breazeale easily converted the penalty kick and Harris was disqualified, leaving the Tigers playing the rest of the game with only 10 players.
Despite the man advantage, Sumrall wasn’t able to capitalize with a lot of good looks, and Bay High came back in the second half with an equalizer midway through the period.
In the 54th minute, the Tigers pushed the ball into Sumrall’s zone and earned what would prove to be their only corner kick of the second half, after getting five in the first half.
Sophomore Erik Booth sent the kick onto a crowd in front of the net, and Sumrall was called for a handball in the 18-yard box. Senior Bryton Dupuy beat Bobcat goalkeeper Haze Henderson with the penalty kick for a 1-1 tie.
That seemed to kickstart Sumrall’s offense, because the Bobcats began pushing the pace harder than they had in the first half with a lead. Sumrall earned three corners and got eight shots – three on goal – in the last part of the period, as the clock wound into the 78th minute.
That’s when the Bobcats drew a foul in front of the net about 25 yards out. Breazeale lined up the free kick and sent a rocket into the upper right corner of the net that Bay High junior keeper Joel Ulrich had no chance to stop.
“We’ve got this seventh grader on our team (midfielder Henry Hamner) who’s phenomenal,” said Breazeale, who is headed for Pearl River Community College next fall.
“We did the same thing at Purvis (in a win earlier this season). I told him to run over the ball, pull somebody out and I just buried the shot top right.”
However, the shot pulled some of the netting loose from the goal frame. That resulted in a delay while the frame was lowered and the netting resecured.
That meant that there would be seven minutes of stoppage time at the end of the 80 minutes. That’s a lot in high school soccer and it was too much for Sumrall.
“It’s tough,” said Breazeale. “You go up 2-1, and that’s when goals seem to come (the other way), right after you score. They got a lucky one on the bounce, and you could feel the momentum shift, then they got the third one and that was all she wrote.
“I think when I broke the top right of the net and they had to tilt the goal and everything, took about three minutes, I think that killed what we had going.”
With their season on the line, the Tigers pressed forward in numbers, and in the third minute of extra time, Dupuy lofted a bouncing shot that the Bobcats misplayed into the net.
Bay High continued to put the heat on, and just a minute after the tying goal, the Tigers drew a foul in front of the net, about 40 yards out.
Dupuy sent the free kick into a pack of players in front of Henderson, and Boudro went up over everyone to head it into the net for the game-winner at 80+4 minutes.
“The first one was just miscommunication between us,” said Huddleston. “Then the goalkeeper, he stumbled over it, and he thought there were enough people to clear it out. The second one, it was all in our heads and it just crumbled apart. That’s life.”
Sumrall returns the heart of its roster next season, so Lee hopes the bitter lessons from Monday night will bear fruit next year.
“We don’t lose a lot, just two seniors, and I’m proud of both of them,” Lee said. “I thought we took some big steps this season, now we need to build on that.”
Photos courtesy of Richard Thompson
