This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Sports

Twinsburg Boys' Soccer Team Fights To 0-0 Stalemate With Solon

Goalkeeping headlines nip-and-tuck affair between conference rivals

Let’s face it, goalkeepers in soccer do a lot of standing around, and although they might be roused to action once or twice in a match, they had better make the play when that rousing arrives.

Twinsburg’s 6-foot-2 Frank Candau met that moment and surpassed it to end Solon’s best scoring chance of the contest in the first half, preserving a 0-0 tie Tuesday at Tiger Stadium in Twinsburg.

Candau headed off Solon’s Scott Welker as he got in behind the Twinsburg defense briefly for what appeared to be an open chance for a score, but Candau rushed out of goal and made sure nothing came of it.

Find out what's happening in Twinsburgwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Candau, a junior, just paid attention to the details and made sure to stick to his goalkeeping fundamentals. Candau, along with the defense, has now produced six shutouts in seven games.

“He got past our last defender and he started coming towards the goal. Like always, I just came out to cut out the angle and when he shot it, luckily it was within my wingspan. So I just parried it away and was able to move it out,” Candau said.

Find out what's happening in Twinsburgwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Solon (4-1-2, 0-0-1) and Twinsburg (5-0-2, 0-0-1) each earned a point for the tie in their Northeast Ohio Conference openers. The nature of the contest ensured that nobody wanted to yield anything to the other team.

“Both teams are good. Solon is ranked 10th in Cleveland, we’re ranked eighth in the Greater Cleveland Coaches’ Poll. Both play pretty organized high-speed soccer,” Twinsburg soccer coach Mike Lally said. “Year in and year out, it’s a very tough game. It was the very first game in the league so nobody wanted to give up any points tonight.”

Twinsburg had quite a chance at earning some points at the end of the game, but Candau’s goalkeeping counterpart, Tommy Koenig of Solon, made a remarkable stop of his own. Koenig denied Tigers forward Chase Betenson’s 10-foot blast in front of the net with 6:49 remaining in the game.

With the ball bouncing around between a pair of Comet defenders seemingly in search of a foot to kick it, Betenson smashed the ball toward the goal, but it thudded off a diving Koenig.

“Chase put it on (goal) with pace. The keeper did well. He got enough of it that he got it outside the post,” Lally said.

In fact, Koenig frustrated Betenson three straight times with a simpler save that rolled to Koenig right before the big save. Then Betenson sailed a chip shot over Koenig that ended his threats for the evening.

Twinsburg had other opportunities as captain Sean Wood fed fellow midfielder Josh Pak Swiger for a header, but the shot went wide of the net at 2:48 of the first half.

In the second half, two corner kicks went begging and a Stephen Lawrence free kick from 27 yards away simply bounced through the goal box and past the net as several Tigers leapt for headers with none connecting at 15:30.

The Tigers travel to Mentor on Tuesday for a 7 p.m. start.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Twinsburg