GREENVILLE – Greenville scored with just 10 seconds left on Monday to defeat Miamisburg 3-2 in the first round of the Ohio High School Athletic Association Division I boys soccer tournament.
After taking an early 2-0 lead, Greenville gave up a pair of goals to go into halftime tied 2-2 with Miamisburg. The game remained knotted until the very end when Green Wave senior Jack Garland scored his second goal of the night to give the Wave a 3-2 victory.
“Excellent job out of him,” Greenville coach Mark Coppess said. “Switching our formation a little bit tonight and giving him more freedom to go up because he does give us that attack in the box. He’s not afraid to attack.”
The OHSAA tournament victory was the program’s first since 2008 when Greenville beat Oxford Talawanda, also by a 3-2 score.
“Well deserved,” Coppess said of Monday’s victory. “They’ve earned that.”
Greenville came out ready to play on Monday night as the Wave scored just 32 seconds into the game on a Tani Mancillas goal.
Just over a minute later the Green Wave extended their lead to 2-0 with Garland scoring his first goal of the night.
“We came out really good in the beginning and then kind of slacked off a little bit,” Coppess said.
Holding a two-goal advantage, Coppess said his team relaxed a little too much, which allowed Miamisburg’s Adam Zech to score and cut the Greenville lead to 2-1 with 7:35 remaining in the first half.
Less than 90 seconds later Miamisburg scored again, this one from Josh Morgan, to tie the game at 2-2.
With the game all knotted up both teams failed on opportunities in the second half to gain the advantage. That is until the very end when Garland found the back of the net with just 10 seconds remaining to give Greenville a one-goal victory.
“That’s been our season,” Coppess said of the late goal. “We’ve had four games that way, but they’ve been for ties. So I’m glad it was a win because I don’t know … overtime … we were getting I think winded there, losing a little bit of momentum.”
Greenville improved to 8-6-3 with Monday’s win while Miamisburg ended its season with a 6-10-1 record.
Greenville now advances to the second round of the OHSAA tournament where it will play Northmont, who beat West Carrollton 6-0 on Monday, at 7 p.m. Thursday in Clayton. Greenville is the 11th seeded team in the sectional tournament while Northmont, who is 7-8-2, is the eighth seeded team.
