SOCCER: West Laurens boys come back to beat Spalding in OT/PKs to clinch region championship

It was a match that had you on the edge of your seat, even if you weren’t sitting down. 

An intense crowd, and the region 2-AAAA title, hung on every single movement of West Laurens and Spalding boys soccer teams in an all-out battle that went back and forth on its way to the wire Tuesday night at The SHU. 

Dead even, at 3-3 through 80 minutes of regulation and 4-4 following 20 extra minutes of soccer, the teams fittingly needed penalty kicks to hash out a winner, and region champ. 

The resilient Raiders, who had battled back from single-goal deficits in the second half and overtime to keep their hopes alive, prevailed in a shootout to win the dramatic slugfest by a 5-4 final, and capture the 2-AAAA crown, and complete a sweep of the Jaguars in their region finale. 

The West Laurens girls, in just as tight a finish, edged Spalding 1-0 in regulation to win an earlier game. 

Ben Rogowski, finishing the night with four, and James Nelson scored respective goals in the second half, and second OT period, to even the score for the Raider boys ahead of the final standoff, which they’d lead 4-3 going into the top of a fifth round of penalties. 

Goalkeeper Clyde Warren smothered the do-or-die shot of the Jags’ Gil Mora-Marinez, and The SHU came completely untied. 

Students and fans, from one side, and West Laurens players, on the other, erupted onto the field and converged at the center circle in a brief moment of unrestrained mayhem. 

Hugs and high fives were shared. Several Raiders were hoisted in the air by classmates and friends. West Laurens head coach Nate Smith was splashed with a celebratory bath of ice water. 

At the end of it all, the team lifted a region championship trophy for the third time in four seasons. 

The Raiders (12-4, 11-1 region) completed their once-beaten run in the league after avenging an only loss to Perry in a similar rollercoaster on the road – winning 3-2 – two weeks before this one, but had to dig just as deep in plenty of other key matches. 

Three other wins, and also the 2-1 loss to the Panthers in the final minute on March 7, came down to two goals or fewer. 

This one, the tightest of all, would at no moment be described as comfortable… or graceful. But West Laurens – by whatever means necessary – managed to pull it out.  

“We’ve said this all along, we’re gritty, we’re not pretty,” said Raider head coach Nate Smith. “These guys, they know how to win. We’ve had some games where we didn’t play well, but in these region games, the games that really really count for our season and our playoff spot, they show up and play. We’re not going to win the beauty contest out there. But the end of the day, they’re gonna give it everything they’ve got.” 

Despite leading early with two goals from Rogowski (one via throw-in from Judd Walker and a second off a free kick) in a back-and-forth barrage to start the opening half, West Laurens trailed 3-2 going into halftime. 

The Raiders’ openings were few and a bit far between throughout the second 40 of regulation, a best set of chances coming early on a series of five or six consecutive set pieces: several corner kicks and throw-ins in rapid fire that either didn’t line up in the box as hoped, or were knocked away by the Jags. 

But they caught a key break with just above 15 minutes to play as an Ethan Bodi throw-in bounded into the box, and caught the hand of an unsuspecting Spalding defender to set Rogowski up on a penalty kick that finally tied it up at 3-each, on the junior’s finish to the left. 

That score would survive a handful of late threats going either way through the final whistle of regulation. 

“We gifted them three goals in the first half,” Smith said. “We knew that if we kept the off the scoreboard in the second half, that we would have a shot. And we scored one, luckily. Well, thankfully, I guess I should say.” 

To call it a physical game would be an understatement. 

While much of the contact was merely pushing and shoving for position away from the ball, plenty of back-and-forth jostling drew players on each side some early warnings, then plenty of late whistles as officials started to crack down on things in the second half. 

What roughness boiled over into flagrancy, or simply frustration in the reaction to certain plays and calls, also brought out multiple yellow cards. 

The distribution of fouls didn’t seem to skew in one direction or the other, though West Laurens caught the unlucky end of one in the Spalding box that presented the Jags a golden opportunity to go back up just into the second half of overtime, after a first 10-minute stanza came and went with few shots on goal for either team. 

The shot would miss upstairs, knifing between bars of the frame and goalpost behind it, to keep things tied at 3-3. 

West Laurens didn’t see many more openings as the period wore on. Spalding, on a bevy of chances, would get several within a brush of going in. 

The Jaguars finally got one to go with about six minutes remaining on a leaping header by Juan Gamboa that flew in the top right corner, well beyond the reach of anyone with a chance of getting to it. 

Now down 4-3, the Raiders were forced to scratch and claw for just one more chance, as Spalding resorted to stalling the clock with some forceful kicks into the seats on every opportunity to clear the ball out of bounds. 

Undeterred, West Laurens regrouped and hiked it up the home sideline on several consecutive throw-ins, bouncing one toward the middle from the left corner, where Walker lifted a ball toward the right side in an attempt to set up a header for Dalton Oxford. 

Though the intended play didn’t come together as hoped, the ball would rebound toward the middle where Nelson – the Raiders’ lone senior – rifled a sidewinding shot that bounced off the hands of Spalding’s keeper and into the net to re-tie it with 4:03 to go. 

Another West Laurens opportunity came up empty, as well, on a shot by Oxford that was deflected and collected with about 1:35. 

The Raiders also held off a couple of scares in the last minute, as Spalding missed from point-blank range off the left post, and again over the top with around 30 seconds to play. 

West Laurens waited out most of the remaining time before a final goal kick to send things to a duel of penalty kicks that would put the outcome on the feet of its five best shooters, and in the hands of Warren in goal. 

Spalding hit its first two shots in the nailbiting sequence, as Alex Sanchez and Justen Anaya – going left, then right – both got theirs past the diving Raider goalie. 

But the Raiders answered both, as Oxford and Nelson both confidently stepped up and buried their attempts in the net. 

The Jaguars were the first to err in the first of the third round, when Gamboa banged one off the top of the bar on a costly miss. Dean Lybrand followed it with another swisher to make West Laurens 3-for-3. 

Jacob Hersey was true on a fourth try for Spalding that got Warren to break the wrong way, but the Raiders held serve with Rogowski, who timed one up perfectly on a target inside the right post. 

That would put Spalding’s chances of staying in it on the shoulders of Mora-Morinez, whose final standoff with Warren had the entire stadium, and both sidelines, squarely on edge. 

“I’m really just praying throughout the game, honestly,” Smith said of his emotions in the tense final moments. “God is good, and he gets the glory for this one, absolutely.” 

Several false steps on the shooter’s approach gave mixed signals as to his chosen angle of attack and shot line, but Warren didn’t go for any of the early cues, remaining balanced on a slight hop to his left as Mora got a bit locked up, and eventually settled on a line straight up the middle where the Raider goalkeeper was waiting, and easily bottled it up to end the match. 

“We honestly felt like we had the better keeper,” Smith said. “They helped us out by hitting the crossbar, but he’s gotta be good enough to make that save at the end. That’s our first game in PKs, and they’ve had four. I didn’t know that till PKs were starting and their coach told me. But that’s a big advantage for them to kind of know how to handle the situation. This is wild, though.”

The West Laurens boys started the 2024 season as a bit of an unknown quantity, and definitely nothing close to a lock to win the region, after graduating a boatload of seniors and breaking in a mostly new lineup that looked the part in early February, getting mercy-ruled in a scrimmage with South Effingham and defeated 6-1 in its season opener at Pike County. 

But after some self-discovery, and tactical experimentation, the Raiders began to find what worked, and continued riding it through the region. 

Though it had every opportunity to concede this not being its year after the early setbacks, Smith’s team stayed at it and found what it was looking for. 

“It’s the players buying in,” he said. “We play multiple formations, we put people in different positions and things like that. They buy in. And the fact that they buy in allows them to do what they do.” 

The West Laurens girls rode a very early goal from Selah Lanton to their victory over the Jags in the early game, scoring off a corner kick no more than three minutes into the evening. 

The feed from the right side was volleyed “around the horn,” so to speak, on three touches by blue shirts that relayed it all the way toward the left side, where Lanton slid a shallow shot past the Jaguar goalie to give the Lady Raiders a 1-0 lead. 

Seventy-seven minutes of defensive stalemate followed, but West Laurens (9-6-1, 9-3 region) endured to hang on for the win, and clinch second place in 2-AAAA for a second consecutive season. 

Both Raider teams, after a Friday-night trip to take on Islands of Savannah, will open the GHSA playoffs at home next week. Opponents, dates and times remain to be determined.