Seaney scores on PK, leads Valley past Rochester on senior day

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

AKRON — Kolton Seaney scored on a penalty kick in the first half, and fellow senior Julian Rosas stopped four shots for a shutout as the host Tippecanoe Valley boys soccer team edged sectional rival Rochester 1-0 on senior day Wednesday.

Seaney came after Rochester’s Jonas Kiser was called for a foul inside the 18-yard box with 14:54 left in the first half. Seaney drilled the penalty kick past Rochester goalkeeper Aiden Harrington.

Valley snapped a six-game losing streak and improved to 2-6. Rochester lost their fourth straight game and dropped to 5-5-1.

Seaney’s penalty kick was one of only three shots Valley had on Harrington. The goal was just the fifth goal Valley has scored this season, and it was their first in four games.

Rosas flew out of the net in celebration after Seaney’s goal, hyping the assembled crowd to make some noise.

Other Valley seniors included defenders Jair Santiago and Keith Haney.

Rochester’s two best chances to score might have occurred in the final 20 minutes.

Wyatt Davis got off a shot that hit the crossbar with 17:25 left.

Also, Carlos Plascencia took a direct kick from just outside of the box after a Valley foul with 1:40 left, but the Valley wall knocked it down in front of Rosas and cleared it out.

Valley first-year coach Eric Ocock raved about his team’s resilience. 

“It was the ability for my players to realize it’s senior night, and I told them don’t disappoint my seniors, and they brought that attitude,” Ocock said. “I told them you can’t change the past. You can predict what we’re going to do today. And they predicted it, and we got the win.”

Valley had yielded 31 goals in its previous seven games this season and were coming off a 10-0 loss to Bremen on Tuesday.

“We moved a few people around,” Ocock said. “It was basically to keep up with their pace because I knew they had some shots and they had some pace in. So basically to hold a tight line and to find our center mids out and to hold your man. Don’t let your man go. You’ve got to stay with him. You don’t let him get past you, or you die trying. Just that kind of attitude.”

Meanwhile, Rochester held a long postgame team meeting to try and find more ways to score. They have scored one goal in regulation play during their four-game skid.

“Atrocious,” Rochester coach Eric Backus said of the team’s scoring opportunities. “That’s a great word for it. … We had opportunities where we had guys standing wide open in the box, and we never got them the ball.

“We talked yesterday about not letting it go downhill, but guess what? It went downhill.”

Backus said he’s not too sure what to do on what to fix it. He said he and the coaching staff were talking with the players during the postgame chat about how they can be of the greatest help to the players.

“They didn’t stay really greatly organized,” Backus, a 1997 Valley grad, said of Valley’s defense. “They just didn’t mess around. Any time there was any kind of little threat, they would just clear it. I don’t know if that got into our kids’ heads. We just couldn’t put any type of opportunity together, and a couple of the ones that we actually had opportunities, we kicked right at one of the better keepers in the area. Taking 40-yard shots and driving the ball down to the end line and then taking a shot with zero angle – just stupid soccer. We’ve reverted to that, so that’s what we’re talking about, trying to figure out why we can’t play simple soccer.”

Eric Ocock

Valley’s first-year coach played soccer at both Warsaw High School and Huntington University. He graduated from Huntington in 2021.

He teaches seventh grade math at Valley Middle School.

“If I’m just going to be frank with you, it’s there, and I’m here to change it,” Ocock said when asked about the passion for soccer at Valley. “But Valley is not known for (being) a soccer school, but it can be. I have so many students who love soccer there, but they don’t play until they’re in middle school, and they get discouraged to play high school, OK? The passion and love for soccer is here. It’s just hard to find. But there’s big groups. I’m here to start young and work them up to be excited to play here.”