Ottawa makes halftime lead stand up in 2-1 regional preview win at Streator

STREATOR – In a tune-up for next week’s regional opener, the Ottawa and Streator boys soccer teams locked up in a back-and-forth match at the James Street Recreation Area on Tuesday where all three goals were scored in a five-minute span of the first half.

The Pirates scored two of the three goals, and eventually held off a second-half push by the Bulldogs to earn a 2-1 Route 23 Rivalry victory.

Ottawa (13-7) and Streator (8-13-2) will open the Class 2A Ottawa Regional at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday with the winner playing the winner of La Salle-Peru and Galesburg at 11 a.m. Saturday for the championship. While it was the regular-season finale for the Pirates, the Bulldogs still have a match against Morris on Wednesday at home.

“We actually moved some players around into different roles to see some different options that we can maybe use starting regionals next week,” Ottawa coach Kevin Olesen said. “It was nothing drastic, but I think we saw some things that we may be able to switch to if needed next week.

“I thought we moved the ball well, and other than missing a couple of pretty good scoring chances in the latter part of the first half, we played a pretty solid match offensively. On the defensive side, we did a good job in the second half of limiting Streator’s chances to tough chances. We kept them from getting any good point-blank shots.”

Ottawa took the lead with 17 minutes, 45 seconds remaining in the first half on a goal by Alexio Fernandez. Fernandez stole the ball on the left wing and dribbled through a trio of Bulldogs defenders before putting a low shot past Streator keeper Seth Zito (three saves).

Just 63 seconds later, the hosts tied the match when David Paton took a nifty pass from Dalton Sliker at the top of the box and put a low shot past Ottawa keeper Connor Diederich as he dove to his left.

The Pirates grabbed the lead for good at the 13:46 mark when Robert Polier scored on a 15-yard shot on the right wing off a pass from Rory Moore.

“Coach talked about still staying aggressive in the second half, but also being smart and not taking any chances that may lead to giving them easy chances,” said Diederich, who finished the match with seven saves. “I thought while [Streator] had a few more good looks than we would have liked to have allowed in the second half, we were able to stop them all and keep our one-goal lead until the end.

“We were coming off a few losses against some pretty good teams, but I felt we just put those aside today and played a pretty good soccer match. It wasn’t the best we can play, but we played as well as we needed to. We will definitely have to play much better against Streator next week.”

Streator held a majority of ball possession and field position in the second half while outshooting Ottawa 8-2, but each attempt was either stopped by Diederich or cleared out of trouble by Pirates defenders.

For the game, Streator held a 13-11 advantage in total shots and 8-5 in on-target attempts.

“I feel like this was a good preview of what I expect to see next week,” Streator coach J.T. Huey said. “Did either team play as well as they can? No. But I think it showed that both teams have a chance to beat the other if one team doesn’t show up to play that day. Now we’ve seen each other, so now it’s a matter of who wants it more on Tuesday.

“Unfortunately, it took us watching them score a couple times to figure out how to play their attackers. I felt like we controlled the action in the second half. We had a number of pretty good chances to get the equalizer, but just couldn’t finish. They were only pretty good chances because we had trouble stringing passes together to make them great chances.

“That will be a big key for us when we meet again.”