Girls soccer: Ottawa-Glandorf blanks Miller City

Another shutout.

Another win.

Another trip to regionals.

Ottawa-Glandorf, which improved to 17-1-2, continued its impressive postseason run with a 6-0 victory against Miller City to capture the Division III district title and advance to the regionals where the Titans will face Riverdale in the semifinals at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Wapakoneta.

“I am proud of the effort the girls gave tonight,” Titan head coach Michelle Maag said. “I thought it was a true team effort and I thought everybody played real well.”

Miller City finishes its season with a 16-4-1 record.

“They are a good team,” Wildcat head coach Kurt Rosengarten said.”There is a reason why they are ranked fourth in the state and that actually might be a low ranking in my opinion. With us they came out and scored two quick ones and I could tell it changed the demeanor of our team. We didn’t have the fight we had when we started.”

The Titans, who have given up only nine goals all year, produced their third straight playoff shutout and O-G has outscored its opponents 2o-0. For the season, the Titans have outscored the opposition 102-9.

The Titans have not yielded a goal since Sept. 8

“Defense is absolute top priority,” Maag said. “For us that is the No. 1 thing to take care and to get a shutout you can’t lose. There is not a possible way if you have a shutout. Our keeper (Emma Brinkman) and our defenders are the start of that defensive effort but we take a lot of pride in that. Everyone on the field has to defend.”

Rosengarten said the strategy was to attack the middle of the field and then try to use through balls on the outside.

“What happened was we’d get the ball there but we couldn’t summon the ball quite right and we’d lose the ball at midfield and never had that chance,” Rosengarten added. “I really wanted to use our speed on the outside to get a through ball to get through and we have to get better at receiving the ball. and that is what it came down to.”

Miller City had zero shots on goal. Ottawa-Glandorf finished with 12.

It was two quick goals that allowed the Titans to grab the early momentum.

Titan junior Bri Douglass, who had two first half goals, notched the first one after she received an excellent pass from Myka Aldrich who spotted Douglass breaking down the left side of the field and hit her with a pass and Douglass did the rest as she worked her way in and fired it into the back of the net to give the Titans the advantage with a little less than four minutes gone in the first period.

A little more than four minutes later, the Titans were celebrating their second score when Lily Haselman, nearly parallel with the goal, fired a shot that glanced off the crossbar to an awaiting Maya Heringhaus who pushed the ball in with her body to give O-G the 2-0 lead with 32:17 showing on the clock.

“We talked about coming into this game that we wanted to get off to a fast start and that was important to us and we got a goal within four minutes which was the goal and then the second goal came four minutes later and that is the pace we wanted to be at and we met that goal so I am proud of all the girls tonight,” Maag said. “It was important to get that early one because things kind of opened up for us after that. If this games sits at 0-0 for a while funny things happen at district finals and bad bounces so I am proud of the girls for getting one in four minutes into the game and that early goal built a lot of momentum.”

Two more goals were added by Douglass and Lily Haselman to give the Titans a 4-0 lead at halftime.

In the second half, Myka Aldrich and Delaney Duling notched goals.

Miller City keeper Liz Otto made 12 saves.

“Give credit to my girls,” Rosengarten said. “They fought the whole way through and I appreciate that for them.”