Published: October 12, 2008 01:43 am         

Cornjerkers and Vikings battle to a tie

HOOPESTON — The intensity and emotion of both the Danville Vikings and the Hoopeston Area/Bismarck-Henning Cornjerkers need not be questioned entering the upcoming soccer Class 2A Regional as it was tested on Saturday in Hoopeston.

Unfortunately there was little tolerance in the evenly matched game as four yellow cards and two reds were handed out in the 2-2 tie.

Danville’s Blake Janesky scored the game’s first goal 22 minutes, 22 seconds into the contest, but minutes later was given a red card. The automatic ejection left the Vikings shorthanded for the remainder of the game, though they never let up.

“Danville, I thought did an exceptional job,” Cornjerkers coach John Klaber said. “To their credit and to our discredit, Danville held in there with 10 players for 60 minutes. I told our guys that we shouldn’t be proud of that from the standpoint of if you can’t beat 10, how in the world do you expect to beat 11.”

The Vikings (3-13-1) held firm on defense with a stout effort from Dennis Forrest and goal keeper Corey Pichon. Pichon stopped nine of the Cornjerkers’ 11 shots on goal before also receiving a red card with only minutes remaining in the game.

The card came upon being shown his second yellow and just after HABH’s Matt Silver tied the game at 2-2. But the emotion of the game didn’t detract from his effort in front of the net.

Pichon had given up the Cornjerkers’ first goal of the game on midfielder Kraig Vanwieringen’s free kick with just under 11 minutes remaining in the second half. And just six minutes later, HABH had an opportunity to take a 2-1 lead on another free kick by Ian Park, but a diving save kept the Cornjerkers from scoring.

“Corey’s a very good goalie,” Vikings midfielder Clint Spidle said. “He had a lot of amazing saves. When Ian Park took that free kick, he had a really nice save.

“I thought it was very competitive. We played very well at first. We came out and had a mistake where one of our players went out. We were playing a man down, but we all pulled it together and played pretty well. We just lost focus for a little bit. That’s just what we’ve got to work on is not to lose our focus.”

Spidle had plenty of focus with four minutes to go in the second half when he netted a penalty kick to put the Vikings up 2-1, just 24 seconds before Silver’s game-tying goal.

Danville managed just five shots on goal to HABH’s 11 — an aspect of the game that Vikings coach Chris Griffin hopes to soon correct. He said at times his players are too selective in their shot attempts. Saturday, though, Danville made the most of its opportunities.

The Vikings close out the regular season on Monday against Big 12 rival Champaign Central before beginning regional play in Urbana on Oct. 20 against the host Tigers.

Griffin hopes Saturday’s emotion-filled battle serves as both a test and a lesson for the upcoming regional.

“We talked about keeping your focus,” he said. “When the whistle blows, you’ve got to get back into position. You can’t put your head down. You can’t do anything else. I understand how hard it is on the field to just forget about things.

“The effort’s been there all year long with my guys. I’m extremely proud of the effort they’ve been giving. We just have a couple mental mistakes and the other teams capitalize and we dig a hole. I thought today was a well played game between two pretty good teams. They did a pretty good job of spreading the field. They play the defensive trap which you can beat, we just unfortunately weren’t able to beat it enough today.”

Silver said that the Cornjerkers are already in a postseason mindset. With a bit of consistency and a familiar regional draw, he sees many positives in the near future for him and his HABH (11-6-3) teammates. And his late goal to prevent a regular-season-ending loss did nothing but put a positive spin on the outlook.

“We’re ready to go,” he said. We’ve got a whole week and it’s going to be a great week for us to just prep for the Mahomet game. We play well over there. We’ve played there twice and we’ve won and tied. This long week ahead of us is going to be a helpful factor.

“I think that (goal) really helped us out because we didn’t give up. Everybody, once they saw that it could be done, nobody’s going to give up. This team has come a long way. If we play the way we can … I tell you what, it’s going to be a long postseason.”