For the fourth consecutive season, the Niagara Knights men's soccer program has cemented a spot in the OCAA Championships.
The Knights played the division crossover game this past Saturday against the Seneca Sting. The story that has been written repeatedly all season long continued in this game as Knights star rookie Oti Frigole (St. Catharines) scored a goal in just the 6th minute to put his team on top early.
The Knights then played a majority of the game with the lead but failed to keep the clean sheet intact when they gave up a 74th minute goal to Seneca's Marcus McGlynn. The late goal didn't get to the Knights heads, however, as they answered back not long after as veteran leader Alex Latham (Welland) buried a header in 80th minute for his first goal of the year to give the Knights a lead they would not relinquish.
"It's so difficult to score in a playoff game," said Latham on his first goal of the season. "Jake's [Therrien] cross was so perfect, I had no choice but to bury it. Nobody wants to be the guy that misses on a nice set-up."
Their second go-ahead-goal of the game was enough this time as the Knights hung on for the victory. Despite outshooting the Knights 17-11, Seneca was only able to manage 6 shots on goal, 5 of which were turned aside by Romario James (Bahamas).
"Today was a textbook team effort," said Knights head coach Frank DeChellis. "We saw some things that we will reinforce and some things that need to be fixed, but right now we'll take the win."
Jordi Amores (St. Catharines) was a leader on the pitch for the Knights, once again drawing strong compliments from his head coach.
"Jordi [Amores] was our field leader again today," said DeChellis. "He has a lot of help with a mature set of veterans around him, but he never loses his cool and has acted like a true captain this year. He set up a goal today, generated other chances and covered a lot of ground. Jordi does not like ugly soccer and he leads by example."
The Knights season continues this Thursday, October 25th for the start of the 2018 OCAA Men's Soccer Championships hosted by George Brown College. The Knights will take on the Humber Hawks who advanced to the OCAA Championship automatically by finishing first in the OCAA Central with a 7-1-2 record. The game will be evenly matched as the Knights finished their regular season with a 7-2-1 record, one point less than the Hawks. Niagara will also be looking to avenge their 1-0 loss to the Hawks in last year's bronze medal game.
For more information on the 2018 OCAA Men's Soccer Championship, click here. All championship games will be live streamed at sportscanada.tv/georgebrown.
