John Bruce, Staff Writer
Southern Ohio Sports Authority is presented by OhioHealth.
JACKSON — For the third consecutive season, the Wheelersburg Pirates are adding a district championship trophy to their already jam-packed case.
CREDIT: Derrick Webb/SOSA
The Pirates (16-1-2) earned that right with a dominant 7-0 victory over Ironton St. Joseph in Saturday’s title game at Jackson High School.
And, once again, it was Max Hagans who was the scoring hero for the Pirates.
The junior hammered in two goals in the first half, one with each foot, to give the Pirates all the scoring they’d need to punch their tickets to the Sweet 16. Hagans added two more goals in the second half to push his season total to an incredible 47.
“Max puts a lot of work into this,” Pirates coach Jon Estep said. “He wants to perfect his craft. He got to play with [Wheelersburg grad] Arron [Jolly] and watch how he went about things during his freshman year. Max has his own goals that he wants to set. He’s earned this. We told him his time would come and he’s taking advantage of that right now.”
Things did not start smoothly for the Pirates, though, as ISJ’s Zachary Johnson and Landon Rowe forced three corner kicks within the opening minute of the contest. However, the Flyers (14-5-1) weren’t able to score off any of those opportunities and Wheelersburg made them pay for that mistake shortly after.
On the other end of the field, St. Joseph played five defenders on their back line to try and stymie the Wheelersburg’s offensive attack. It worked in the early going, although the Pirates’ Connor Estep nearly scored from 35 yards out on a scintillating strike that just grazed the crossbar.
Less than two minutes later, at the 32:50 mark, Hagans scored the opener off a pass from Brody Wilburn. Hagans collected the pass around the penalty mark and smoked it into the back of the net with his left foot.
Next, he scored at the 18:27 mark on a pass from Nick Sylvia. Slyvia, a freshman, made a couple of nice moves inside the box and found Hagans at the top, who took one dribble and crushed a right-footed shot into the netting for a 2-0 lead.
The rest of the first half was also controlled by the Pirates, with the midfield play of Estep and Jackson Schwamburger as a highlight, alongside defensive efforts from Nolan Wright, Gavin Bradley, Miller McKenzie and Clark Weller.
Freshman goalkeeper Breyden Byrd wouldn’t be tested at all in the opening stanza.
In the second half, it would be all Wheelersburg as the Pirates added a hat trick from Slyvia (31:38, 29:00, 15:00) and two goals from Hagans (37:41, 29:00) to produce the final. The Flyers got some shots on target in the second half, but Byrd notched one save and Jeremiah Stratton collected two saves as well.
“[The combination of Hagans and Sylvia] is unreal. Since I got here in 2015, we’ve always had one kid up there that’s been really skilled and really good,” Estep said. “The fact that we have two guys with a similar skillset that feed off each other, it doesn’t allow other teams to focus on one. We haven’t had that. We’ve always had an athlete but never two like we do now. They’re really exciting to watch.”
The Flyers’ season ends in the district championship game for the third time in the past four seasons. They will graduate two seniors, Mark Hodges and Zachary Johnson. Johnson closes his senior season with 43 goals and 20 assists. Junior goalkeeper Evan Balestra had 11 saves for the Flyers in the loss.
Meanwhile, Wheelersburg advances to a Division III regional semifinal where it’ll face Minford at 6 p.m., Wednesday at Chillicothe’s Herrnstein Field.
The Falcons handed the Pirates their only loss this season on Oct. 13 and forced a tie on Sept. 13.
“We know what [Minford] has and we’ve had some tight games with them,” Estep said. “But either way, we know we got to this point. [Minford] Coach [Jacob] Hackworth and I have talked about it all year long and the beauty of it is, we feel we had the two top teams in this area. Somebody has to get to the regional final. We’ll settle it on the field. We have much respect for them and we’re looking forward to the challenge.”
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