Schwartz lifts Howland boys past Nordonia

By DAN HINER

sports@vindy.com

HOWLAND

David Schwartz came up big for Howland in a 4-0 win over Nordonia during in Division I boys soccer sectional semifinal on Wednesday night.

Schwartz scored two goals in the first half to give the Tigers a 2-0 lead heading into halftime. Schwartz scored his first goal with 28:24 remaining in the first half. He scored his second with 22:42 remaining after he tracked down a Howland free kick on the right side of the field. Schwartz’s shot grazed the fingertips of Nordonia goalie Connor Kaminicki and found the back-left corner of the net.

“In practice, we work a lot on set pieces and quick restarts and we’ve been preparing for this game for a while all week,” Schwartz said. “We know each other really well, our team chemistry is really good, and we always put each other in good opportunities to score and I just happened to be in those spots.”

Braden Elsea extended the Howland lead to 3-0 with 26:35 left in the game, and a Christopher Tvaroch’s goal on a penalty kick with 23:28 remaining put the game out of reach.

Howland head coach Brian Stiles said Schwartz has scored 25 goals this season, and is one goal shy of the Tigers’ single-season record. Stiles said he wanted to target his scores on the outside to take advantage of Nordonia’s defense.

“We thought there were some weaknesses that they had that we could take advantage of, especially on the outside flanks,” Stiles said. “Kids did a nice job of feeding the ball out there. We got some pretty good strikers — we got some guys that could put the ball in the back of the net. They did a real nice job tonight.”

Nordonia (4-12-1) struggled offensively all night — due in part to the Tigers’ defense. The Knights attempted just five shots. Nordonia didn’t attempt its first shot until 3:27 remained in the first half. Howland goalie Michael Schwartz recorded three saves in the shutout.

“We’ve actually had five straight games of shutouts, and we were struggling there — giving up one or two goals a game,” Stiles said. “It’s something we really focused in on and a lot of it was us just playing in the proper shape in the back to give cover to our other defenders. Since we’ve done that, we’ve really turned the defense into as strong as the attack’s been.”

Howland will play Solon — the top seed in the Kent district — on Saturday night. Stiles said the Tigers will try to tighten up their defense heading into the weekend.

“The biggest thing we’re probably going to focus on is just working our defensive shape and defensive fundamentals,” he said. “We’re not going to play them any different. We think we have a pretty good team and we’ll see how we do against them.”

Stiles said he wanted his team to gain confidence early in the tournament before the Tigers would have to face bigger schools later in the postseason.

“We’re playing in a [Kent] district so coming from Youngstown, sometimes you’re not quite sure what you’re going to face because you haven’t seen a lot of the teams,” Stiles said. “I really think we needed a good performance tonight to just give us the belief that we can compete against some of the bigger schools.”