Had a new sports experience last weekend. Columbian High School's Athletic Director, Carl Fisher, offered me the chance to handle the Public Address Announcer chores for the Division III Regional Boys' Soccer championship at Frost-Kalnow Sta-dium Saturday night.
Of course I accepted.
Never had announced a soccer game before. Football and track, but never soccer. In fact, I never had sat through an entire soccer game before. Excluding, of course, the elementary school games our kids played in. But, you don't sit at those anyway, you stand.
But I have enjoyed watching some soccer games on TV, learned some of the terminology, and felt that, with the help of Jeff Frankart, who was running the scoreboard and clock, I could get by.
It seemed to work out OK.
Part of the fun was the fact that the game had a very close finish.
The teams were Kidron Central Christian High School and Genoa High School. Both nicknamed The Comets.
Kidron scored first, about half way through the first half. It looked like they would win and move on to the State Semifinals, but, with just under two and a half minutes left in the game, Genoa scored to tie it up.
If you ever watched any soccer, you know they have a tie-breaking system that can get pretty exciting.
The teams played a sudden death (the OHSAA, trying to appear positive, calls it "sudden victory") overtime for 15 minutes.
No scoring. So we went into another 15 minute sudden death/victory overtime.
Still no more scoring. That brings up a Shoot Out.
In a Shoot Out, each team picks five players to take part. Each kicker gets a shot from nearly point blank range, challenging the other team's goalie.
Kidron took the advantage there, scoring three times to Genoa's two to win the match, two goals to one.
Had they still been tied after the first Shoot Out, they would have gone to a match up Shoot Out with five new players from each team. They would have had to match each other, shot for shot.
In other words, if the first shooter scored, the other would have to score or his team loses. Talk about pressure.
It was interesting to see some of the comments from Kidron fans on JJ Huddle's website from before and after the game.
Kidron fans were not happy when the game was moved from Elida to Columbian. Their main objection seemed to be the surface, artificial, as opposed to grass. Along with that was the fact that Genoa already had played five games at Columbian, one in the regular season and four playoff games.
But then someone pointed out that there are several turf fields in Kidron's league so they would not be entirely new to the artificial surface.
Some other commentators on Huddle felt that Columbian's field is a little too narrow for a playoff game. Well, it's the same width at both ends.
However, I don't imagine that Kidron Comet fans had much to grumble about on the drive back to Amish Country.