(Story by Stephen McDaniel)
The Ankeny Centennial boys’ soccer team is already ranked as one of the top teams in the state, but the Jaguars know that there’s a higher level that they’re still trying to reach.
Second-ranked Centennial remained unbeaten on Tuesday, but some missed opportunities to build upon its lead and a late penalty kick by visiting Valley helped the unranked Tigers escape with a 1-1 draw.
“There’s plenty of talent on this team to go a long way,” said Centennial coach Brian Duax. “Even on their worst day, they will be in games. But on their best day, they can make some serious things happen and that’s what we need to unlock. We need their best game all the time, chances finished, back line stout and we’ll be near impossible to beat.”
The only two games this season that the Jaguars haven’t won both ended with draws that followed a similar formula: control the match, miss some prime opportunities to put the game away and concede a late goal.
Centennial’s first draw came on April 17 when the Jaguars took a 1-0 lead at Urbandale before the J-Hawks scored an equalizer off a corner kick in the 73rd minute.
The Jaguars saw Tuesday’s game follow a similar script.
“I refer to the boys as the definition of insanity,” Duax said. “We’ve been letting teams hang around and hang around, not finishing chances and we expect a different result.”
It didn’t take very long for the Jaguars to get on the board.
Just a few minutes into the match, Tate Duax stole the ball away from the Tigers, went on a run and found a trailing Brock Brazeau–who found the back of the net to give Centennial the early edge.
Brazeau is one of the key pieces that the Jaguars are trying to get going as they continue to face teams selling out to eliminate any and all chances for Duax, their leading goal scorer.
Last year, Brazeau finished second on the team in scoring with six goals as a junior. The midfielder scored just his second of the year after narrowly missing out on a couple of other scoring chances over the past few games.
“Brock has to stay a little bit closer to Tate and give him a little bit of support because every team is now doubling and triple teaming Tate,” Duax said. “(Tate) needs a partner in crime, a Robin to his Batman, which was the game plan tonight and at the beginning of the game it was working.”
Despite coming up with some other chances, the Jaguars took their 1-0 lead into halftime and weren’t able to capitalize on some big opportunities to extend their margin early in the second half.
Much like the Urbandale game, the lack of goal scoring opened the door for the opposition to find one good chance that turned a victory into a draw.
And just like the J-Hawks did, the Tigers found that chance in the 73rd minute.
A ball played up for Valley forward Johan Ceu resulted in some contact around the Centennial box and was ultimately ruled inside the box, rewarding the Tigers with a penalty kick.
Yahir Cardenas-Fuentes lined up and scored the penalty kick for the defending Class 4A champions to tie things up with under 8 minutes left to play.
“I thought our play was good, and I thought we controlled the game,” Duax said. “We knew the only way they would score was on a quick counter and finding our backs one on one, and that’s exactly what happened.”
The Tigers were able to gather some momentum following the goal as emotions were running high with both teams.
Both squads were shown some yellow cards in the minutes following Valley’s goal, which included the Jaguars having to briefly play without forwards Lucas De la Cuba and Andrew Krueger and goalkeeper Will Krueger during that stretch.
“There is no excuse to get three yellow cards in 30 seconds because we can’t shut up,” Duax said. “That’s more disappointing than any of the results.”
Despite finishing with the draw, Centennial remained the only unbeaten team in the CIML Conference after No. 1 Johnston suffered a 2-1 loss at Urbandale on Tuesday. The Jaguars are now 3-0-2 in the league and 6-0-2 overall, while Valley’s records are 1-1-3 and 4-3-4.
Centennial will travel to Mason City on Thursday before hosting Iowa City West in another non-conference game on Friday. The Riverhawks are 2-6-1 on the season after dropping an 8-0 decision at Marshalltown on Tuesday.
“We over me,” Duax said of the team’s main takeaway from Tuesday’s game. “Selfish play doesn’t get us the results that we want, team play will get us the results we need and just buy into the scouting report we give. It would’ve picked (Valley) apart, and they didn’t follow it for whatever reason.”
