At halftime of Monday night’s quarterfinal matchup between No. 4 Arrowhead and No. 5 Sauk Prairie, it looked as if the Warhawks’ dominating first-half performance would keep the Eagles down the entire game.
Sauk Prairie, however, had no plans of going down easily.
Arrowhead moved on to the state semifinals with a 12-9 victory at Taraska Stadium, but Sauk Prairie gave the Warhawks all they could handle with a stifling defense that produced a five-goal run in the second half that ultimately was not enough.
“Great teams just know how to win,” Arrowhead senior attack Will Lauterbach said. “It gave us a nice wakeup call, but you gotta take the punch, have a short memory, get back up and get ready for the next hit.”
Arrowhead (14-6) led by as many as six goals in the first half. The Warhawks had a run of four unanswered goals to take an 8-2 lead, capped off by sophomore midfielder Owen Arnett’s second of three goals for the game. Arrowhead took a 10-4 lead into halftime.
“We had some great vision by our dodgers in the first half,” Arrowhead coach Jake Sweitzer said. “We were attacking some cuts into some lanes really well and hitting on those feeds. Our guys were winning one-on-one matchups and drawing slides, which was awesome.”
But Sauk Prairie (14-3) made the necessary adjustments and almost advanced to the state semifinals as a result. After giving up Arnett’s third goal of the game with 8 minutes, 25 seconds to go in the third quarter, the Eagles stymied the Warhawks and went on an five-goal run of their own, climbing to within two points of Arrowhead with just 3:57 left to play.
The momentum shifted for Sauk Prairie in third quarter when junior attack Cam Logan and sophomore middie Dylan Oas scored on back-to-back man-up situations. Junior middie Riley Jelinek scored two of his game-high four goals during this stretch, as well, including a quick score off a stolen pass right in front of the Arrowhead goal. Jelinek also assisted on the fifth goal of the run scored by junior attack Willy Hanson, which cut Arrowhead’s lead to 11-9.
Sauk Prairie had another man-up situation with 2:23 left to play, giving the Eagles the opportunity to move to within just one goal. However, the Warhawks killed the power play, and junior Will Lauterbach scored his third goal of the game with 3 seconds left to play to seal Arrowhead’s trip to the semifinal game at Kettle Moraine on Wednesday night.
“Sauk Prairie has some really great attackmen who play hard,” Sweitzer said. “If we keep driving and keep doing what we’re supposed to do, the second half is a different game. But credit to Sauk Prairie — they made great halftime adjustments and came out and executed in the second half, but just came up a little short.”
The ferocious comeback could be an indicator of things to come for this youthful Sauk Prairie squad. All of the Eagles’ starters will return in 2020, and Sauk Prairie coach Dylan Baier believes next year’s team has the makeup of a championship contender.
“I just told them in the huddle, ‘We’re taking the whole thing next year, there’s no question about it,’” Baier said after the game.
