By Michael Cignoli (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
OZARK — The scoreboard at Tiger Stadium showed there were 79 seconds left in the first half when Ozark surrendered the goal that ultimately ended its boys soccer season on Tuesday.
How much time actually remained was much more complicated.
Ethan Blake’s second goal of the game gave Jefferson City a 2-1 halftime lead that held for the rest of the evening as the Jays continued their dominant season, topping the Tigers in the Class 4 state quarterfinals and ending Ozark’s hopes of reaching its first Final Four in school history.
But the amount of time left on the scoreboard when Blake put the Jays on top was not a true reflection of how much time was left in the half. The clock didn’t begin operating when play first began, so the teams spent an extended period playing with an even 40 minutes on the board.
By the point the clock operator realized the mistake and the scoreboard began ticking, Ozark coach Zack Owens said an official informed him that between 60 and 120 seconds had elapsed.
Blake’s go-ahead goal was scored with 1:19 on the clock, well within that window of uncertainty. With that evidence alone, Owens could have made a convincing argument to nullify the goal.
But there were no complaints from Owens, nor anyone on the Ozark bench.
Why? It’s simple.
For precisely situations like this one, the scoreboard clock isn’t the game’s official time. It’s provided as a luxury to fans. Owens said the on-field referee will signal when the clock operator should start and stop the clock, but the head official will always keep track of time with a watch.
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Owens noted there was a time later in the half when the referee signaled to stop the clock because he was issuing a yellow card, but the scoreboard kept running, further complicating the situation. When there was about 5:35 showing on the scoreboard, the coach asked an official how much time actually remained. He said he was told there were exactly five minutes to play.
That checks out with what happened at the end of the half, as the official called for halftime with about 35 seconds left on the clock, or roughly 44 seconds after Blake gave the Jays the lead.
“We actually gained back a lot of that time that we had lost,” Owens said. “I thought it was pretty fair. That’s a great point and a lot of people may not realize that, but I checked with them and we were good on it.”
The exact time may not have been an issue, but the timing was.
“We let them get a goal right before halftime,” Owens said. “That’s a momentum killer. That’s a mental killer and an emotional killer. That definitely didn’t bode well for us.”
Jefferson City has been nearly unstoppable this fall, outsourcing opponents 109-11 en route to a 25-2 record that includes 19 shutouts. Two of them came against Ozark earlier this season.
Blake opened the scoring in the 6th minute when he collected a long pass and fired a shot in off the crossbar, but Dillon Holesapple pulled the Tigers even 15 minutes later on a penalty kick.
The 1-1 tie held until Blake telegraphed a pass to the far post in the dying moments of the half, but the Tigers broke up the play and the ball returned to him. Blake collected the ball again and snuck a shot past Ozark goalie Trevor Carlton to put Jefferson City ahead.
Ozark didn’t have a quality scoring chance until the final eight minutes, at which point the Tigers dialed up the pressure significantly. But Jefferson City’s defense proved too much to overcome.
“My assistant coach made a great statement,” Owens said. “He said, ‘They’ve got some incredible players on the field. And then everyone else is great.’ They don’t have any holes anywhere. It’s just a tough group to play, but the last two times we played them they’ve only beat us by one. Towards the end of each one of those games, we were hammering them just like tonight. We’re just one or two little spots away from tying it up.”
Owens said he hopes that’s what the Tigers take away from tonight’s game.
“I told them ‘Time heals all wounds,’” Owens said. “Right now, this is going to hurt a lot. But as they grow into the young adults that they’re growing into, they get into college, they finish up this year, they keep moving on, they have families, this story won’t be about the tears and the heartache from tonight. This story will be about how they surpassed so many expectations.”
Those expectations were tempered at the start of the season, as Ozark graduated 14 seniors and lost the coach from last year’s 24-win team that set a school record for victories. This year’s team finished 18-9, but collected a third straight district title despite not being favored to win.
The Tigers also advanced further in the state tournament than the 2019 team, which lost in the first round.
“That 14-senior loss, that fueled us,” Holesapple said. “All year, all summer, we kept hearing ‘Oh, they lost 14 seniors. It’s a rebuilding year.’ We took offense to that. We said, ‘We’re good enough to do exactly what they’ve done and go even farther.’ This team, that’s what we did. We put a chip on our shoulder. We said ‘Alright, that’s our challenge. Take it to the next step.’ We did exactly that and I couldn’t have asked for more from these guys.”
Owens agreed.
“The things these kids did,” the coach said. “They’re so talented in their own ways and mature and they just desire to win. We’ve started a tradition in Ozark of being a good soccer school. They wanted nothing more to continue to do that.”
Even if the clock wasn’t on their side.
“I don’t know that it would have made a huge difference,” Holesapple said. “Even if it did, it’s in the past now. I don’t think any of us are upset about it.”
