By Levi Payton
sports@joplinglobe.com
What good would the semifinals of the Class 3 District 12 playoffs be without a little bit of drama to keep you on the edge of your seat?
In a time of the season when one kick can make the difference between survival and the end of a championship quest, the Joplin Eagles and Carthage Tigers chose survival. Oh, and there was plenty of drama, at least in the Carthage game.
The Eagles (15-4) got things rolling in the afternoon’s opener, blanking Springfield Central 8-0 at Joplin High School. If you blinked or turned your head for a slight second you easily could have missed the first four Joplin goals of the night. They scored six times in the first half alone.
Once they found the goal for the first time on a Joe Rice goal in the 12th minute, the Eagles began a fast and furious scoring pace.
Parker Maher netted the second Joplin goal on a give-and-go from Max Duncan in the 16th minute before Zach Cox scored his first goal of the season on a Duncan assist in the 25th minute.
Jordan Wood added another score just two minutes later before Joseph Loden, Danny McDonald and Lucas Kemper finished the scoring. McDonald finished with a pair of goals.
With 36 shots on goal compared to just two for Central, the Eagles simply dominated from start to finish.
“We just wanted to put a lot of pressure on them and get the ball in the back of the net,” Eagles coach Ed Miller said. “That was the main goal tonight.”
In what was easily the most exciting game of the night, the Tigers (16-5) were staring defeat squarely in the face before scoring a pair of goals in the span of three minutes, spilling into overtime, to shock the Willard Tigers 2-1.
That sets up the district championship game at 6 p.m. on Thursday as Joplin and Carthage will square off for the third time this season. The series between the schools even at 1-1 this year. The Eagles beat Carthage in overtime the last time the teams met two weeks ago.
On Tuesday, battling a much larger Willard team, Carthage came out flat in the first half and really couldn’t get anything going on offense. Defensively, they were rather solid, though they did give up a goal in the 28th minute to Willard’s Jackson Patillo to make it 1-0.
The score would stay that way until Carthage pulled one out with only seconds remaining.
The stage was set when Willard was whistled for a handball less than a foot outside the keepers’ box, and inside the final minute of regulation with Carthage trailing 1-0.
In the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass in football, Carthage’s Matthew Robinson amazingly managed to knock the set piece between Willard’s wall of defenders and into the net to make it 1-1 as regulation ended.
With momentum suddenly on their side, Carthage would score again just two minutes into the overtime period as a shot from Juan Ortiz deflected off a Willard defender and found the net to send Carthage to the final round.
“Today was survival,” Carthage coach Jacob Osborne said. “We kept generating opportunities, but I was starting to think it wasn’t our night to score.”
