FENTON — Perryville’s first trip to the Class 2 state soccer finals in five years didn’t get off to the best start, but the Pirates (16-5) persevered, claiming a third-place finish to cap off what coach Jerry Fulton called “a pretty dang good year.”
“I’ll take that every year,” Fulton said. “I’m just so proud of all these guys. Just all of them. All the seniors — we’re going to miss them next year — but thank God they were here.”
Leading the charge in Saturday’s third-place game at World Wide Technology Soccer Park was senior Treyton Barnett, who scored 3 goals and had an assist to boost the Pirates to a 5-1 victory over Harrisonville (15-10).
The third-place victory came on the heels of Friday’s 2-1 semifinal loss to Principia (14-12), who scored a late goal to knock the Pirates into the third-place game.
“We played a really good game,” Fulton said. “They got a goal late, and we just had a little bit of a rough day there, and we ended up going down. We had a chance to go up and missed it, and they got a corner kick late and scored off of it.”
Fulton said there might have been some contributing factors, especially since none of his players had competed at this level.
“There might have been a little nerves involved and stuff like that,” Fulton said. “Last night after the loss, they were pretty upset, and we talked about it, and we came up with a plan. We finally got them to realize that, ‘Hey, all right. We didn’t get our chance at first. But third’s pretty good considering we went farther than any other public school.’ We’ll take that, and we’ll move on.”
Harrisonville found itself in the third-place game after an 8-0 loss to Springfield Catholic (30-1), a private school like Principia that only lost one game this season, a 1-0 loss to Ozark in September.
With Fulton’s words finding purchase, Perryville’s players knew they couldn’t let that semifinal loss get to them.
“Obviously, it sucked for a couple of hours after,” said senior goalkeeper Waylon Huber, “but we knew we had to get back up on our feet and come back. We weren’t going home in fourth place, that’s for sure.”
Barnett said he had similar feelings.
“We just had a different mindset,” Barnett said. “We just had to let that pass. We knew that we were still in the state, and we still have one more game to prove ourselves, so we did.”
Against Principia, sophomore Ethan Pohlman scored the Pirates’ only goal off an assist from Barnett. In goal, Huber (14-5) finished with 14 saves in his fifth loss of the season.
Saturday was a completely different story. The Pirates took a 2-0 lead 15 minutes into the first half on a goal by Dez Hampson — one of two on the day for the junior — and led 3-0 at the half. Barnett finished with three goals and an assist, while Pohlman and Karston Schilli each had 2 assists.
Huber — buoyed by Perryville’s strong defense — only gave up one goal in the game and had 8 saves.
Huber said Saturday’s victory was a great way to cap a season that saw the Pirates win a conference championship and their first district title in five years.
“It’s a great feeling,” Huber said. “Obviously, we didn’t end where we wanted to, but we definitely ended up with us winning. We came in and persevered.”
Barnett called it “amazing.”
“It feels amazing,” Barnett said, “just putting in all the hard work each year, every single day, for four years, and then being with the same team when I was younger and how we started in rec league to club and doing all that. It just feels amazing having my last game, making it to state, and just being with my boys for the last time.”
As Fulton said, with a grin on his face, “Not a bad season.”
