The Greeneville Greene Devils soccer team defeated Austin-East 1-0 in a Class 2A sectional on Saturday at Burley Stadium to punch its ticket to another state tournament.
Just when things started rolling for the Devils, something bigger came rolling in – a thunderstorm that caused a 2 1/2-hour delay and almost forced the match to be suspended until the following day.
The delay came with 22 minutes left in the match and the Greeneville leading 1-0. When play resumed, the Devils continued to clamp down on defense and secured their 13th straight trip to Murfreesboro.
“I’m just so happy for these guys and the fact that they get to go back to the state tournament,” Greeneville coach Jerry Graham said. “Some of these new guys get to experience what that feels like. But the resilience these guys have shown all season ... ”
Austin-East forced Greeneville to play on its heels most of the first 20 minutes. The Devils got shots on goal from Austin Beets and Cristian Banegas, but Roadrunner keeper Issac Dile kept his net clean.
At the 18-minute mark, an Austin-East defender was called for a hand ball in the box, resulting in a penalty kick. Beets took the kick and put the Devils ahead with a shot to the bottom right.
“We’ve been working on penalty kicks in practice this week,” Graham said. “They’re a whole lot scarier whenever you’re in a situation like this than when you are in practice. We come out and try to make them as stressful as possible by yelling at the players and clapping and doing all that. It’s hard to simulate the pressure they are under.”
Just as the sky started to darken in the second half, Graham felt like the Devils were threatening to pull away.
“We felt like at the end of that last 10-15 minutes, we were really starting to find our combinations and our patterns,” he said. “It really came at a bad time. The first thing we said when we stepped off the field was, ‘Man, we were really starting to coming together.’
“You never know what it’s going to be like,” he added. “We really talked up the guys to come out and match (Austin-East’s) energy. They’re down a goal and we knew that energy was going to be heavy on the other side. I though they did a good job of matching them.”
The Devils did more than match the Roadrunners’ energy. They came out with more energy in the final 22 minutes, possessing the ball for roughly 19 minutes to keep the visitors on their heels.
Greeneville’s defense, which had taken significant damage to its roster the past few matches, held fast and saved the shutout. Most recently, the Devils lost Brandon Rogers in the region title match to a knee injury.
“I feel like Griffin (Gricunas) and Liam (Polte) did an exceptional job tonight,” Graham said of the defense. “Liam was huge moving those balls in the back and heading them out. He did such a good job of the directional hitting. And then Griffin was there with pressure and cover all night long. Griffin was there to clean things up. He did a good job of not overextending himself. They both filled in admirably for Brandon.”
Senior keeper Tanner Myers kept the net clean with six saves, but he wouldn’t take all the credit for the shutout.
“You know I could, I could try and take credit, but really it just comes down to our defense,” Myers said. “I’ve been very lucky this season. I’ve had a great defense. Despite replacing three out of the four (from last season), they have still come out and just played amazing.
“We’ve got Liam Polte, who’s in his first year on varsity, Griffin Gricunas, his first year on varsity, Ricky Torres, this is his first year with us. Brody Inscore, who’s normally an offensive player, he’s playing defense. And they’re playing lights out, and I can’t give them enough credit for this kind of performance.”
Myers is certainly happy to get another shot at a state championship.
“I was gonna say it’s an indescribable feeling,” Myers said on how it feels to go back to Murfreesboro. “You know, the first three times, it felt amazing. It’s a great feeling. Again, I can’t describe it, but this being my senior season, what we’ve gone through, coming back from losing the state final last season and replacing so many people, this just feels amazing.”
Greeneville enters the state tournament with a 12-9-1 record, far from the 18-2-3 record the Devils took into last season’s state tourney. But as Graham said before this season, the regular season is there to prepare for the postseason.
Along the way this season, the Devils have played some tough competition, including bigger schools like Emond North and Father Ryan in the Smoky Mountain Cup.
“This was good for us,” Graham said. “We’ve played some good Triple-A teams, (been up) at halftime and not carried it through. This is big for us and our character, to persevere.
“We knew Austin-East, they’re a talented group. They got good touch on the ball and they are talented, technically. We knew it was going to be a challenge and the problems that we had tonight was because of the pressure that they put on us. It’s impressive for our guys to overcome that.”
The Devils are determined to make it home next week with another addition to the trophy case, but Graham said they’ll take it one match at a time and rest up in the meantime.
“Celebrate tonight, come back and look at the things we did well and look at the things we didn’t do well,” he said. “Was it because Austin-East was pressuring us or not? Just look at who we’re going to play first round and wait for that bracket to come out and game plan for whoever we draw.”
Greeneville will open the tournament against Alcoa at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Richard Siegel Soccer Complex in Murfreesboro.
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