Red Devils survive Belmont, advance to district finals

In a game that turned into a physical battle with several yellow cards, the Tippecanoe boys soccer team advanced to the district championship game with a 5-1 victory over Belmont last Tuesday night behind a hat trick from Cameron Smith.

“This was a test tonight mentally,” said Tipp coach Joel Slyman. “When you have a team that works just as hard as us and pressures just as hard as us and is more physical than us, how do we embrace that?” 

“I thought at times we did a good job, then there were other times that we fell to whatever was happening in the game and the extracurriculars. There were moments tonight we looked pretty good, and there were moments we were not ready for the opponent.”

“This was a good lesson tonight where you are going to have adversity, where it is the refereeing, or the other team, or maybe we aren’t playing well… how do you face adversity?”

Tipp scored in the opening ten minutes with a goal that was called back due to offsides, but they recovered with 23:55 left in the first half to get the 1-0 lead on a goal from Colin Turner as he headed a goal off the corner from Maddox Robinson.

With just over ten minutes left in the half, Tipp added to their lead when Smith scored on a free kick following a whistle against Belmont from 25 yards out, and the Red Devils took a 2-0 lead into the half.

The Red Devils struck early in the third when Smith scored on a shot that bounced off the post and into the net with the assist from Robinson and Tipp led 3-0. 

After Belmont scored to ruin the Tipp shutout, the Red Devils answered 45 seconds later when Logan McEntyre scored at 13:53, pushing the Tipp lead back to three. 

The final score of the game came at 9:05 on a penalty kick from Smith, as he completed the hat trick giving Tipp a 5-1 lead.

“Cam is our horse and conference Player of the Year for a reason,” Slyman said. “All of his accolades and leadership from him, our guys rally with him. In tournament times, we expect our big guns to make the big plays and he did tonight.”

Tipp advanced to the district finals where they competed with Hamilton Badin on Saturday, with results elsewhere in this week’s Gazette.