Sunday, November 14, 1999
Summit wins boys soccer title
Cummings' goal in 71st minute is only score
BY MARK SCHMETZER
Enquirer contributor
Jack Cummings celebrates after scoring the game's only goal.
(AP photo)
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COLUMBUS — Summit Country Day boys soccer trainer Jeff Stayton felt as if he needed to do something to help the Silver Knights break their scoreless tie with Gates Mills Hawken in Saturday's Division II state championship game.
Stayton coached the Summit Country Day 1995 baseball team to the only state team title in school history.
He couldn't make any managerial moves Satuday, so he settled for taking off his state championship ring and putting it away.
Three minutes later, in the game's 71st minute, SCD senior Jack Cummings caught up with a loose ball six yards in front of the Hawken goal and sent it rolling through the Hawks defense and into the goal for the only goal of SCD's 1-0 upset victory before a crowd of 1,707 at Columbus Crew Stadium.
“So many things go through your head,” said Cummings, a senior midfielder who finished the season with 23 goals. “All I was thinking about was to go back and play defense. I was thinking, "I've got eight minutes left in my senior year.'”
“We've been knocked down the last four or five years,” SCD coach Charlie Cooke said. “We've lost in the regional finals. We've run the gamut of disappointment. It's sweet to get it after coming this far.”
In its first-ever appearance in the state finals, SCD (19-2-2) captured Greater Cincinnati's eighth championship in the 24 years that the Ohio High School Athletic Association has sanctioned boys soccer tournaments. SCD's appearance was the first by a Greater Cincinnati school since Roger Bacon won the second of back-to-back titles in 1990.
Gates Mills Hawken (19-2-3), the state's No. 1 team in the final Associated Press poll, reached the finals for the third time in the last four years. The Hawks have been shut out in all three appearances.
The SCD offense was more stymied than the Hawks' attack in a first half that featured just five shots, four by Hawken. Silver Knight junior goalkeeper Mike Fessler stopped all four and the only shot he faced in the second half to record his ninth shutout of the season and fourth in seven postseason games. Fessler allowed just three goals in the tournament.
“They took the game to us in the first half, and we took the game to them in the second half,” Cooke said. “It was like two different games, really. You got the feeling that whoever scored the first goal was going to win.”
“We thought it was going to come down to penalty kicks,” Cummings said. “We didn't want it to come down to penalty kicks.”
Cooke moved Cummings from forward to midfield for the second half, and that helped the Silver Knights increase the pressure on Hawk goalkeeper Kyle Ostendorf.
Cummings' title-winning goal came off a throw-in from the corner by Karl Pembaur.
“The throw-in was deflected back toward me,” said Cummings, who scored with 9:48 left in the game. “I got most of it. I think it deflected off somebody's toe, and a couple of their kids ran past it.”
Goal: SCD — Cummings. Shutout: Fessler (5 saves). Records: SCD 19-2-2, Hawken 19-2-3.
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