BACK-TO-BACK — The Weir High boys soccer team captured its second-consecutive OVAC Class 4A title with a 3-1 win over Beaver Local Saturday at Wheeling Island Stadium. — Andrew Grimm
WHEELING — Prior to Saturday’s OVAC Championship match, Weir High head coach Chris LeFever told his team the birthday gift he wanted was simply for them to play hard.
They did him one better, gifting the first-year coach an OVAC Championship Trophy with a 3-1 win over Beaver Local at Wheeling Island Stadium, the second-straight conference crown for the Red Riders.
“Half the boys are crying, they’re so thrilled with this,” LeFever said. “This is my birthday, so my present was the win. I said (before the game) I didn’t care about the win, I wanted to hustle. The hustle turned into the win. This is huge for these guys.”
The repeat performance may have seemed somewhat unlikely following the departure of a lot of key pieces from last year’s title winning group to graduation, but none of that changed the internal goals for the Riders.
“No, we didn’t expect we would repeat, but that is always the goal for our high school, boys or girls,” LeFever said. “We always go after the OVAC playoffs and the SSAC playoffs. This was one of our big goals for the year, and we did it.
“Everybody worked the whole game. We said the key was to treat it as a 0-0 game the whole way no matter the score and the boys did that.
“We struggled against (Beaver Local) last time we played them on senior night, we tied 0-0. We knew we had to create more offense this time because they out-played us last time.”
It was a day of celebrations for the Weir High (6-4-5) group, as not only did they capture the title and celebrate their coach’s birthday, the players had to rush back up Route 2 to prepare for homecoming.
With the start delayed and the first half played mostly in a hard rain, the offense picked up as the rain let up. The teams battled to a 0-0 tie at halftime, and early in the second half the rain slowed down and eventually stopped. Not long after, Weir opened the scoring on an Antonio Pittman goal with a little more than 29 minutes to play.
“Everybody settled in, it was a little bit calmer, the rain wasn’t pounding into their eyeballs anymore,” LeFever said of the change in weather. “IT was easier to have a little more focus, and the communication got better. When it was raining, we weren’t talking and they started talking when it stopped.”
Albert Scheibel connected to make it 2-0 about seven minutes later.
The Beavers (5-4-2), however, did not go away quietly as Ben Miller got his head on a ball in close and knocked the ball past Weir keeper John Wansack (18 saves) to make it a one-goal game with 16:26 left on the clock.
Scheibel, though, all but put things away with 7:26 to go when he got his foot on a rebound from a Michael Iafrate free kick and provided the final margin.
“We had opportunities, and they just happened to be the first ones to get on the board,” Beavers head coach Joe Zirillo said. “We were playing catch up from there on out. They caught the momentum. We fought back, out guys have fought all year, but Weir is a good team and it was a good game.”
UP NEXT
Beaver Local: Travels to Brooke on Tuesday.
Weir High: Hosts Morgantown on Tuesday.
.