Rockhurst’s 4-1 loss in semifinals puts Hawklets in third-place soccer match

The Missouri high school boys soccer state tournament returned to the St. Louis area this fall after a four-year stint at Blue Springs South High School.

And the St. Louis-area teams are putting on quite the show for their hometown fans.

The championship games in both Class 3 and Class 4 on Saturday will feature all-St. Louis matchups.

In a Class 4 state semifinal Friday night, Francis Howell upended Rockhurst, 4-1, at the World Wide Technology Soccer Park.

“We played hard,” Rockhurst coach Chris Lawson said. “I just wish we played the whole game like we did the last 25 or 30 minutes. You need to play a complete game at this time of the year, and we did not.”

The Hawklets were making their record 34th state playoff appearance. They have won more games than any other team in the state tournament and have advanced to the most state semifinals.

But it was Francis Howell, which won its ninth straight match Friday, that will set a milestone. Howell has guaranteed its best state tournament finish, having previously finished fourth in its only state tournament appearance in 1992.

“We knew coming into the game that we were the prohibitive underdog,” Francis Howell coach Michael Enright said. “We knew that Rockhurst had a great team and a great tradition. But we have been on a good run ourselves and felt we could get them on the counter attack. We could not have scripted it any better.”

Francis Howell got the lone goal of the first half, when Jake Totty converted from in front after a good run by Jake Taylor. The Vikings took complete control of the game with a pair of goals less than three minutes apart early in the second half.

Taylor scored on a power move, and Ryan Zile scored on an impressive left-footed shot.

The lone Rockhurst goal would come on a penalty kick by Keaton Schieffer. The Hawklets had some good scoring chances after Schieffer’s goal, but they would never cut the margin to a goal.

Totty put the exclamation point on Francis Howell’s victory with his second goal of the game with less than eight minutes remaining.

“We missed some chances, but they played exceedingly well,” Rockhurst senior Cole McLagan said. “They got the better of us tonight, and they deserved to win.”

Francis Howell will move to Saturday’s championship match against De Smet, which defeated Nixa 4-1 in the other Class 4 semifinal. De Smet defeated Francis Howell 3-2 in a regular-season game Oct. 2.

Rockhurst will play Nixa, which lost for just the second time in 27 games, in the third-place match at noon Saturday.

“That will be a banner on the wall game,” said Lawson, whose brother Dirk won a state championship last weekend with O’Hara in Class 2. “We are proud to be here, but there are no fourth-place banners on the wall.”

McLagan said the Hawklets will be ready.

“We don’t want to go out with double losses,” McLagan said. “Tomorrow is an important game, and it is a game we will win.”

This story was originally published November 13, 2015 at 9:43 PM with the headline "Rockhurst’s 4-1 loss in semifinals puts Hawklets in third-place soccer match."