You couldn’t have asked for a better high school sports environment. It was an intense rematch between bitter rivals with the season on the line. The atmosphere in the stadium was frenzied and loud, with hundreds of fans packing the stands. Western Albemarle and Charlottesville, two of the best boys soccer teams in the state, doing battle with a trip to the Region 3C championship hanging in the balance.
Just over one month ago, the Black Knights and Warriors played a tight game, with Charlottesville emerging victorious with a hard-fought 1-0 win. On Wednesday night at Charlottesville, it seemed as though we were headed for a similar outcome, with the two teams knotted at 0-0 for nearly three quarters of the game. Ultimately, however, Western junior Will Graham scored a goal midway through the second half to give the Warriors the lead. Western would hold off a furious Charlottesville attack before scoring two more goals late in the game to seal the 3-0 victory.
“It seems like losing to CHS the last couple of years has been the best thing that happens to us,” said Western Albemarle head coach Milo Oakland.
Back in 2019, Western lost a lopsided game against Charlottesville in the regular season and used that game to propel them to another successful postseason run.
“We lost to them one-nothing,” Oakland said. “We really thought we could have gotten it. But they beat us and they outplayed us and we realized that we had to make some changes.”
Despite no goals being scored, it was an exciting first half with end-to-end action. Both teams played very physical defense to prevent offensive runs in the early part of the game.
Western had a flurry of opportunities to break the tie late in the first half, with several free kicks from just a few yards outside the box. On one such free kick by Western’s Casey Williamson, the ball rattled around the box a few times and appeared to have struck the forearm of Charlottesville senior Noah Boswinkel. The Western bench and fans were enraged as there was no call for a handball and the game remained scoreless heading into halftime.
“We were controlling the game pretty well but we weren’t being dangerous,” said Oakland. “They were bending but they weren’t breaking.”
In the second half, Charlottesville nearly took the lead on a great through ball by Malcolm Brickhouse which found Miles Kershner streaking toward the goal wide open on the left side. Western goalkeeper Ryan Marks slid and collected the ball at the last second as Kershner collided with Marks.
With just over 23 minutes remaining in the game, Western finally broke through and scored the game’s first goal. Junior Will Graham got the ball inside the Charlottesville box before giving it up to Lachlan Murphy. Graham got the ball back from Murphy rolling to his left and got a strong left foot on it to send the ball into the back left corner of the net to give the Warriors the lead.
For a moment, you could forget that Charlottesville was hosting the regional semifinal as the large crowd of Western supporters erupted.
“When we scored, it was loud,” Will Graham said. “They brought a lot of energy and excitement to the game.”
“They showed up, they were pumping our guys up,” Oakland added about the crowd. “You could just feel the energy. It was like a wall of noise kind of passing through the bench out onto the field.”
Western continued to feed off of the energy from the fans as they tightened their defense to try to protect their newfound lead. On the opposite side, Charlottesville’s fans also made a lot of noise to push the Black Knights as they tried to score an equalizing goal.
Brickhouse nearly delivered that equalizer a few minutes later but his shot was saved by Ryan Marks.
Charlottesville was relentless in their offensive pursuit, but Western’s defense held strong led by junior midfielder Sam Vigilante.
“A shutout against them is phenomenal,” said Oakland after the game. “Scoring against them is one thing but keeping them off the scoreboard is really hard. I just have to give a huge shout out to Sam Vigilante. He was the dominant player for our team. He controlled the tempo of the game, stopped so many counter attacks, kept possession for us. He really just did everything we needed him to do in the midfield.”
With 3:43 left in the game, Western senior Lachlan Murphy added a crucial goal to all but seal the victory for the Warriors. Charlottesville was playing up, aggressively trying to tie the game with as many players in the box as possible. Murphy was able to sneak past the only defender on the back line for a free break before putting the ball past Charlottesville goalie Angus Monro to make it 2-0 Western.
Western senior Casey Williamson added another goal for Western a couple minutes later on a strong shot from the right side to cap off the victory.
“It feels amazing,” Williamson said after the game. “We got revenge on them. We’ve been waiting for this for seven games.”
Charlottesville played hard until the end, but could not break through the Western defense as they had done once in their previous matchup with Western. The Black Knights’ great season comes to an end with a final record of 8-1-2.
“It’s tough, they’re a great group,” said Charlottesville head coach Martin Braun of his senior class. “It’s a couple of the kids that we won the state championship with three years ago. They mean a lot to me, on the field, off the field.”
With the win, Western advances to the Region 3C final on Friday against Spotswood.
