EFFINGHAM — A fantastic, record-breaking and memorable season ended on Friday night at Klosterman Field at Washington Savings Bank Stadium.
Effingham fell to Rochester, 3-0, in the sectional championship match of the Class 1A Effingham Sectional. The Flaming Hearts ended the season with a 22-1-3 record. They won the first regional championship in program history and also won the Apollo Conference title.
“It’s definitely a season to be proud of,” head coach Logan Arney said. “This year, we set goals of winning the conference and regionals, so we accomplished everything we wanted. On top of that, we set a lot of records. It’s been cool to see the turnaround of this program.”
EHS battled the entire night, with the scoreboard not depicting the play on the field.
The first half saw a corner kick goal find the back of the net in the 34th minute.
“The whole game, we played really well,” Arney said. “Even their coach afterward came up and said how hard we fought and that we should have been proud of the game we played. We played a really strong defensive half. I was really proud of our shape.”
The Rockets added their second goal in the 46th minute and their third in the 52nd.
“They scored three goals and none of them were very clean goals,” Arney said. “It was one of those [things] where you wished you could have had it back because, for as tight a defense as we played all half, to get one of those that sneaks in unluckily is a tough one.”
Heading into the match, Arney felt both teams were very similar.
“We matched up very similarly,” Arney said. “They play a similar formation. We came into it knowing this was going to be a lot of individual battles. We fought start to finish; they just had a few goals that trickled in.”
Rochester executed the game plan perfectly, taking away the options that the Flaming Hearts had.
Senior Maicol Sefton and sophomore Connor Delong didn’t have many scoring chances the entire match.
“They definitely gameplanned around us. They definitely watched a lot of film,” Arney said. “Double-teaming our main people; they played a really strong defensive game. They shut down a lot of our normal plays.”
The Rockets advance to the Raymond (Lincolnwood) Super-Sectional on Monday against either Columbia or Glen Carbon (Father McGivney).
EHS graduates 11 seniors: Sefton, Ina Mapes, Camilo Aden, Sebastian Simoni, Primo Hernandez, Luis Gonzalez, Alan Barojas, Andrew Wagoner, Bryson Marler, Daniel Angel and Alberto Zaragoza.
“This senior class was all freshmen when I started,” Arney said. “I feel like a proud dad to see them through from freshman year to senior year. There’s talent there that’s nearly irreplaceable.”