Columbus North’s Flynn Keele, left, kicks the ball during Wednesday’s regional semifinal at Center Grove.
Chris Williams | For The Republic
At the beginning of the season, the Columbus North boys soccer team set a goal of winning a sectional title.
After the Bull Dogs claimed their first sectional in six years last week, they reassessed those goals.
In a one-game-at-a-time mindset, the current goal is to win the regional title. Class 3A No. 4 North will have a chance to do that when it takes on Floyd Central in the regional final at around 4:30 p.m. today at Bloomington South.
“At the beginning of the year, we discussed the distinction between what our goal should be and what our ceiling could be and kind of explained to the team that they’re only as good as their last season, so their goal was to win the sectional, which is great, and they’ve done that,” North coach Andy Glover said. “That’s something to hang their hat on, but it’s nothing to be content with. So we’re searching for the most mature performance we can put together, and I think if we construct that for 80 minutes, we’re incredibly difficult to beat and play against.”
The Bull Dogs (17-1-1) put together one of best halves of the season Wednesday in a 3-1 regional semifinal win at Center Grove.
“It’s the result we expected, and the one we wanted, as well,” senior midfielder Anthony Johnson said. “We played how we’ve trained the last five months nearly, and we did exactly what we were told to do and what we needed to do.”
“I’d say we came out there and played how we wanted to and got the goals in early, which is always helpful,” senior midfielder Flynn Keele added. “We played our game and didn’t change for them.”
North led 3-0 until the Trojans got on the board in the closing seconds of the half.
“The first 25 minutes of the game, we came out really strong,” senior forward Nathan Imlay said. “They couldn’t do anything against us. As long as we play like that in the regional final, we’ll be set.”
The Bull Dogs won 2-1 at Floyd Central on Sept. 22. But North knows it will need another big effort to beat the Highlanders (13-4-4) again.
“We treat every game the same, so we’ll go into it like we do every other day, practice or game,” Johnson said. “If we play like we did (Wednesday) night, I think we’ll be fine. But we can’t go out soft, despite beating them earlier this season. We can’t expect that again.”
Imlay said he doesn’t think the Bull Dogs played their best game in the regular-season meeting at Floyd Central.
“We can’t expect to just go out there and beat them,” Keele added. “We have to treat every game the same. That’s how we have to look at every game. Don’t expect anything to be given to us without us working as hard as we can.”
Glover isn’t surprised North is playing the Highlanders at this stage of the tournament.
“(Wednesday) night was incredibly difficult beating Center Grove because it was the second time we’ve played them,” Glover said. “This will be the second time that we’ve played Floyd, as well. They’re on our schedule for a reason. Both of those teams are because they’re good. Our team likes a challenge. Our schedule is challenging for a reason, and I don’t find it ironic that we’re playing two teams in the post season that are on it.”
Several members of the team, including Johnson and Keele, are sporting gold hair this week. They said the idea was sparked by the team winning the sectional last week.
“It was kind of a mutual thing between a lot of us,” Johnson said. “It started when a couple of us said if we won sectional, we’d do it, and then it carried to the rest of the team.”
