Prairie Ridge soccer beats Benet, advances to state for first time in 25 years

WEST CHICAGO – Seth Matson wants to keep playing soccer with his buddies.

The Prairie Ridge senior will continue to do so for the rest of the week after a 4-1 victory over Benet in the Class 2A Wheaton Academy Sectional on Tuesday.

The Wolves (19-4-1) advanced to the state finals for the first time in 25 years. They will face De La Salle at 3:15 p.m. Friday in a Class 2A semifinal at Hoffman Estates.

“Every game we kind of just talk about how we want one more game together,” Matson said. “It’s not really about winning, but it’s about not losing so we can stay together.”

The players love seeing one another contribute. Matson was trying to persuade reporters to interview a teammate rather than himself.

‘I’ve never had friends this close to me in my life, and can say I have 23 of them,” Matson said. “Every kid on my team I would do a lot for.”

One of them would be senior Gabe Porter, who returned to the lineup and immediately made an impact.

“We really are just peaking and we had one of our starters [Porter] get his first start back today, but he hurt his shoulder again so who knows if we’ll have him on Friday,” Matson said. “But we feel really good, and we have a lot of depth on the team.”

Prairie Ridge senior Henry Knoll scored with 17:10 left in the first half to turn a scoreless but seemingly lopsided game around.

Up until that point, Benet (15-5-3) was dominating but with nothing to show for it.

“It was crazy [with] puddles on the field and the downpour, and I thought we handled it about as well as we could have,” Redwings coach Matt Klosterman said. “And you know when they got the PK, I think that was their second time into the attacking half. At that point of the game, we’re doing just about everything right, but one mistake with readying the ball with everything with the winds and the rain and we gave up that PK. And [goalkeeper] Patrick [Stasch] still made the save, and we couldn’t get on the rebound.”

Stasch denied Knoll’s penalty kick, but his rebound attempt found the net for a 1-0 lead.

Benet junior Will Khazen tied the game a few minutes before the half with a rewind-worthy long-range goal that cleared the Prairie Ridge defense and goalkeeper Christopher Zinevich. It was all the offense the Redwings could muster that resulted in a goal despite creating some chances.

“I can’t really say we played bad,” Klosterman said. “We drew a penalty and didn’t convert one [trailing 2-1 with 32:18 left in the second half]. There’s a lot of things where I’m like, ‘Well, we did a lot of things well today to come away with a 4-1 loss.’ But that’s soccer sometimes.”

Knoll was able to dribble and create for himself in the box just four minutes into the second half to give the Wolves a 2-1 lead.

It took a while for Porter to get off the field after getting fouled and injured with 31:19 left to play. He watched from the sideline as Matthew Fireng took the ensuing penalty kick, doing a fantastic impression of Knoll’s first goal to make it 3-1.

“The keeper made a great save on both of them, but we were there and got the ball and got the goal,” Fireng said. “We played great as a team and it showed.”

Nicolas Flaugher found himself with the ball and without Stasch nor any other Redwings in the path to the goal. He made it 4-1 with 13:33 left to play,

Prairie Ridge is only two wins away from its first state title since 1999.

“Tonight really sums up all we’ve accomplished this year,” Knoll said. “It’s just a crazy feeling. It’s hard to explain and put into words. If you said at the beginning of the year we’re going to state we wouldn’t have believed it ourselves. I’m glad to see our hard work pay off.”