ShawneeDispatch.com

Overland Park — What a difference a year makes.

After struggling through much of the 2008 soccer season with a roster that included numerous players with little to no soccer background, the 2009 Maranatha Academy squad is headed to the Class 4-1A state quarterfinals.

The Eagles built off of last year’s learning experience and this season’s challenges to earn the No. 2 seed in the regional playoffs. They shut out No. 14 Bishop Ward, 3-0, in Tuesday’s semifinals, and followed it up with a 3-0 victory over No. 8 Tonganoxie on Thursday on a drizzly night at the Overland Park Soccer Complex.

“Those hard losses in previous years (were tough), but now all that hard work, listening to the coach, working as a team, building together … it’s all paying off, and we’re coming out ready to play and we’re ready to win,” said senior forward Taylor Lemmon, who scored a pair of goals in the victory.

Lemmon set the tone early. He lined up for a free kick on the right side from 20 yards out and fired a shot that clipped Tonganoxie goalkeeper Keaton Truesdell’s fingertips and fell into the net. That gave Maranatha a 1-0 lead less than four minutes into the game.

The Eagles were in control the rest of the way.

In the 13th minute, senior midfielder Brant Asbell threw the ball in to Lemmon, and the crafty forward went to work attacking the goal. As the defense collapsed on him, Lemmon slipped a pass to his left where sophomore Luke Miller took it in stride and buried a shot into the net for a 2-0 lead.

The Eagles continued to pound shots at the goal for the remainder of the half but were unable to connect again. Tonganoxie countered with a handful of strong runs at the goal with forwards Bret Koch and Tyler Woolworth, but they were unable to capitalize.

Maranatha led 2-0 at halftime.

Lemmon fired a flurry of shots early in the second half, and he found the net again — for his state-leading 36th goal of the season — in the 55th minute.

Tonganoxie countered with a series of shots by Matt Briggs and Matt Saathoff but was unable to score.

The Eagles pulled most of the starters for the final few minutes of the game and let the team’s younger players gain some valuable postseason experience while the veterans celebrated on the sideline.

Junior goalkeeper Alex Siemers preserved the shutout for Maranatha.

After the final buzzer sounded, the Eagles received their regional championship plaque that symbolized their return to the state playoffs after a two-year absence.

“They’ve worked hard,” Maranatha coach Keith Nelson said. “We took some lumps even at the beginning of the year, but my speech to the guys is always the same: We learn from our mistakes, and I tell them it may take me 16 games to teach you guys the game, but by the time the playoffs roll around, we will have made the mistakes and learned from every one of them and we’ll be ready. They got on board with me, they jumped on the back of my experience and our system, and it’s paid off.”

Tonganoxie ends its season with a 7-9-2 record.

Maranatha improves to 13-5. The Eagles now await the outcomes of Friday’s regional championship games before they find out who their opponent will be in Tuesday’s state quarterfinal match. Regardless of who they play, Lemmon said the Eagles will be ready.

“From this game and previous games, I feel like we’re ready to take on anything,” he said. “We’ve got the skill, we’ve got the heart, we’ve got the desire and we want it.”

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