Columbus North’s Anthony Johnson passes the ball during a semistate soccer match against Cathedral at Seymour High School in Seymour, Ind., Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022. North defeated Cathedral 2-1 to advance to the state final for the first time since 2012.
Mike Wolanin | The Republic
Columbus North will take an 11-game winning streak into Saturday’s Class 3A Boys Soccer State Final against Noblesville.
The Bull Dogs’ last and only loss this season came Sept. 9, when the fell to Carmel 1-0. North’s players are expecting the Millers to be a similar team to their Hamilton County rivals.
“If they’re like any other Indy team, they’ll be big, fast, athletic,” North senior midfielder Anthony Johnson said. “They’ll be able to move the ball. I imagine they’ll be a lot like Carmel’s play style.”
“I just know that they’re a huge Indy team,” North senior forward Nathan Imlay said. “I think they’ll be relatively like Carmel — big, fast kids — but I definitely think we have a chance against them.”
The 3A No. 4 Bull Dogs (19-1-1) and 3A No.7 Noblesville (15-3-3) will square off at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at IUPUI’s Michael Carroll Track and Soccer Stadium.
The Millers beat Carmel 1-0 early in the season, but North won 2-1 against an East Central team that played Noblesville to a scoreless tie. Among other common opponents, the Bull Dogs (5-0) and Millers (6-0) both beat Southport, and North (2-0) and Noblesville (1-0) both beat Perry Meridian. The Millers won 6-2 against a Center Grove team that the Bull Dogs beat 2-1 and 3-1.
“They’ll definitely be a good side and a good challenge for us,” North senior midfielder Flynn Keele said. “As long as we stick to our style, play our game and focus on ourselves more than them, we’ll do well.”
The Bull Dogs are led in scoring by Imlay (11 goals, three assists), junior Christian Cardoso (nine goals, 16 assists), Keele (nine goals six assists) and junior Obed Oliva (seven goals). Juniors Aidan Whitley, who missed all but three regular-season games with a fractured collarbone, and Nico Gotoh each have five goals and two assists. Johnson is second on the team with 11 assists.
Columbus North’s Christian Cardoso yells in celebration after Columbus North beat Cathedral in a semistate soccer match at Seymour High School in Seymour, Ind., Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022. North defeated Cathedral 2-1 to advance to the state final for the first time since 2012.
Mike Wolanin | The Republic
“They’re very good at changing formations and changing tactics based on the competition that they’re playing,” Noblesville coach Ken Dollaske said. “When they were playing lesser opponents, they brought their wing defenders up the pitch and were able to put a lot of pressure on the defense. We saw their game against Carmel, which was the only team to beat them, and Carmel was able to bring a lot of pressure on them, so they had to sit back defensively. We’ve definitely been able to pick out a few of their players that could cause us some trouble. No. 9, Cardoso, plays that attacking mid position, and he’s kind of the engine that helps them go offensively, and he’s one of the guys that we need to contain, and I think if we do that, we can be successful.”
North’s defense includes senior center back Eduardo Cordova, sophomore center back Konnor Gribbins, sophomore left back Thomas De La Cruz and junior right back Raul Oliveria. Freshman Leo Iorio has been a starter in the back, but has been hobbled by two ankle injuries, although he hopes to play on Saturday.
Senior Oscar Ballinas and junior Max Grewe, an exchange student from Germany, have split time in goal for the Bull Dogs this season. However, Grewe likely will go the entire way on Saturday after Ballinas was issued a red card for coming off the bench onto the field during a skirmish in the final minute of Saturday’s 2-1 semistate win against Cathedral.
“We’ve had a lot of surprises over the season,” North coach Andy Glover said. “The team has responded admirably. We talk a lot about managing setbacks and creating opportunities for other players.”
While North won its first sectional this season since 2016 and is making its first state finals appearance since winning in 2012, Noblesville is the defending 3A state champion. The Millers returned only one starter, outside midfielder Jake Johns, from that team, but added players who were part of FC Cincinnati and Columbus Crew Academy teams last year.
“I think it’s a testament to how strong our program is top to bottom,” Dollaske said. “Most of our kids who now are starters were on our JV team last year, but our JV team has been historically good. It also helped this year that we had three kids come back from the MLS Next Academy. They weren’t with us last year, but they are very strong players, so we were able to slot them in positions that are very helpful for us.”
Noblesville is led offensively by junior forward Sam Holland (13 goals, eight assists), senior forward Sam Divis (11 goals, nine assists). Junior Cole Thompson has a 0.87 goals-against average.
“They’re physical, fast, direct, quite big and they like to play forward,” Glover said. “Sometimes, soccer can be contrasting situations, and our brand contrasts theirs in a good way. We like to hold it, we like to keep it moving, we like the ball on the floor as much as we can. We try hard to construct and build and create moments, connecting more passes maybe than the opposition, so in that regard, perhaps we’re a little bit more patient, which is philosophically the way we like to play soccer here.”
Glover gave his team Monday off this week to rest and recover before getting back to work on Tuesday.
“We battled a little illness last week,” Glover said. “Midweek, three kids had to miss practice because they were sick, so regrettably, going into Saturday, we wished we would have taken Monday off last week. The kids certainly played a very hard, very emotional game on Saturday, so we thought it was in the interest of the team to decompress mentally and physically and gather ourselves for a good, strong four sessions leading into Saturday. It’s been a real steady, slow, gradual increase over the season to hopefully find the best performance in the final game.”
The Bull Dog players are excited to compete in their first state finals.
“This is our first time experiencing anything like it,” Johnson said. “We’re going to go into it with a level head and treat it like we’ve treated every single game this season so far and take care of business.”
Keele agreed.
“We’re going to take it like any other game,” Keele said. “Our whole motto this season definitely is to take it one game at a time, so never look too far ahead in the future, and play to the best of our ability. It feels great to be here, but I don’t think we’re done yet.”
“There’s a lot of good energy around us,” Imlay added. “The team feels great. I’m really excited for the weekend, and hopefully, we bring back some hardware.”
