‘Soul-crushing goal’ enables Chargers to upend Raiders, end defense of QND’s state title

CHILLICOTHE, Ill. — The response was swift, sudden and significant.

“That was a bit of a soul-crushing goal,” Quincy Notre Dame’s Mason Monteyne said.

Title-dashing, too.

In the 14th minute of Wednesday night’s Class 1A Chillicothe IVC Sectional championship, senior forward Leo Cann gave the Quincy Notre Dame boys soccer team a 2-1 lead over Peoria Christian when he hammered home a Brody Jones restart.

Less than a minute later, when the Raiders’ back line failed to clear a bouncing ball, the Chargers’ Caden Schmidgall scored to tie the game and change the tone entirely.

“It’s so annoying,” Cann said. “I just can’t put it into words.”

Peoria Christian took the lead 12 minutes later, and Schmidgall netted two goals in the first 15 minutes of the second half to eliminate the defending Class 1A state champions with a 5-2 victory. The Chargers (22-4-2) will face Johnsburg at 11 a.m. Saturday in the super-sectional, while the Raiders bow out with a 10-11-2 record.

“You really had the expectation you were going to go to state again, at least get to super-sectionals,” said Monteyne, a senior defender. “What can you do now? It’s over. It’s done.”

Cann reiterated the same sentiment over and over.

“It’s unfortunate,” he said.

So was Schmidgall’s first goal.

The Chargers appeared to take control of the game two minutes into the first half when senior midfielder Jameson Fisher split two defenders on a run into the box, took a cross from Jo Yakota and buried a shot for a 1-0 lead. It took less than seven minutes for the Raiders to answer as junior midfielder Rylan Fischer buried a header off a Jones corner kick in the ninth minute.

Cann gave the Raiders the lead five minutes later with his seventh postseason goal.

It was extremely short-lived thanks to Schmidgall.

“That was the turning point of the game,” Peoria Christian coach Cory Hynek said.

Yakota, a Japanese foreign exchange student, gave the Chargers the lead with 13 minutes remaining in the first half when he collected a loose ball, sidestepped a defender and beat Raiders goalkeeper Max Frericks for the 3-2 edge.

“That guy was electric,” Cann said of Yakota. “He beat us all game on the dribble.”

The opportunity for the goal, though, wouldn’t have existed without a defensive miscue.

“If we clear the ball the way we should have, those two goals don’t happen,” QND coach Greg Reis said. “If we deal with those, we’re probably in pretty decent shape.”

The Raiders trailed 3-2 at halftime.

“What we talked about at halftime was we had to maintain a little bit of possession at the back and we have to be better at clearing the ball,” Reis said. “Their pace just killed our back line, and they did a nice job of sliding balls over for guys to finish.”

Just 58 seconds into the second half, a cross from junior midfielder Quinton Hynek found Schmidgall on the right side of the box and he buried his shot between Frericks and the post. Schmidgall finished his hat trick 10 minutes later, making a run from midfield that left him 1-on-1 with Frericks, and he buried his shot into the left side of the net.

After that, a rally by QND never happened.

The Raiders appeared to score on a restart when Cann slipped a shot around a defensive wall and into the right side of the goal, but the official hadn’t blown his whistle to restart play and nullified the goal. Cann, QND’s leading scorer, struggled to find space thereafter with Peoria Christian blanketing him with three defenders most of the time.

“I don’t care how much tape we watched and how much we scouted them,” Cory Hynek said. “Video doesn’t do Leo justice. He’s so tough to handle.”

So is the speed and pace of Peoria Christian’s attack.

“It surprised me, too, at first,” Monteyne said of the Chargers’ quickness. “I noticed it and told our defense to drop back more to expect the runs and the kicks over the top of us. I thought we did a better job of that in the second half, but it just wasn’t enough to come back.”

Still, a team that suffered significant graduation losses from last year’s state title team got within two steps of another final four berth.

“I think we surprised a lot of people,” Cann said. “And I think we could have gone farther. We’ll never know.”