By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
Western Alamance boys’ soccer players convened in the assigned locker room at halftime of the Class 3-A state championship.
The expressions ranged from anger, dismay, and shock. For a few minutes, the noise from the stands had died down.
That did nothing to soothe the mood. The Warriors had reached the final night of the season.
Here they were about an hour away from the biggest disappointment of their athletic careers.
“We went into the locker room definitely shocked,” senior defender Boston Cornell said.
Now, they waited for coach Camden Brooks to enter and address the team.
“I was in the locker room. I was ready to go home,” junior goalkeeper Eamon Hipps said. “I was pretty sad.”
Still at the field, Brooks sat on a bench with his brother, Western alum and current Southeast Alamance coach Jackson Brooks, to assess what happened during the previous 40 minutes. The Warriors had fallen into a 3-0 hole against Asheboro.
“They were just being efficient,” Camden Brooks said of the Blue Comets. “But we weren’t playing badly. We had chances, it just wasn’t falling. I wasn’t hitting the panic button.”
Noah Barrett had a season full of scoring highlights for Western, but he and his teammates had no goals midway through the state final.
“Everything had built up to this moment – senior year, state championship and were down 3-0,” Barrett said. “I’m going into that second half, I don’t like saying this, but I kind of accepted this probably isn’t going to end the way we wanted it to.”
Brooks admitted Asheboro’s third goal late in the half made the situation more dire, so dealing with that kind of deficit would be a challenge. He entered the room.
“Some of the kids you could tell may have been a little stressed out,” Brooks said. “When I went into the locker room, I really didn’t see a lot of heads down. I didn’t walk into a silent locker room. It wasn’t like that at all. It did not take me very long at all to convince them we were in it.”
Part of that came because of senior Smith Johnson, who his coach describes as “a big morale kid.” Johnson, who didn’t play in the game, was the one making the most noise, encouraging his teammates and insisting the season would not conclude in such a devastating manner.
Brooks’ message was basic.
“You guys are doing well, we’ve just been unlucky,” he told them.
Brooks coached the Warriors to the 2021 state championship. He has had other playoff experiences as coach of the school’s girls’ team.
Yet a 3-0 hole in the state final was new to him.
“In that type of environment and atmosphere, to fight back, it’s tough,” Brooks said. “It’s loud. You can let the other team get into your head, or you can stay focused. . . . I didn’t need to go on and on and on. They understood what we needed to do. We had like some minor tactical adjustments, but more so just trying to pump them up and let them know I believe in them.”
During those moments of reflection and anguish, belief arose.
“There wasn’t really a speech that just brought us together,” senior defender Blake Bacchus said. “Something clicked in all of our heads. We had to lock in. This was our last game together. This is our whole season and we have 40 minutes to prove something. That’s just what changed.”
It turns out that they needed 60 minutes. The Warriors emerged back into the cold air at Mecklenburg County Sportsplex.
“Put the blinders on,” Brooks said. “Don’t look at the scoreboard. It’s 0-0. You’ve got to scrape back a goal at a time.”
The last time the Warriors won the championship, Grant Bacchus was a spectator watching his two older brothers.
This wasn’t how he recalled it playing out.
“Going into the locker room at halftime being 3-0 down, some of us had our heads down, some of us were kind of trying to pump each other up,” the freshman said. “I was just sitting there thinking like, ‘I’ve watched them win this before. That means that we can win this time, too. We just can’t put our heads down.’ ”
Across the next hour-plus, Western went on to make history.
No team had responded from a three-goal deficit in a North Carolina High School Athletic Association soccer championship game and emerged as the victor. The Warriors won 4-3 in overtime.
“We just always believed in ourselves the whole season,” senior forward Dominic McNerney said. “We had never been down like that before, but in the moment it was like we can either put our heads down and get embarrassed in front of all these people after working hard all season or we can make even more history, more than we have already had this season and pull off what is officially the greatest comeback in state championship history.”
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One goal at a time
Asheboro had scored three times spread across 20 minutes.
“They put three in the net in the first half,” McNerney said. “We can go put four in the next 40 minutes. We have 40 minutes to determine the rest of our season.”
The Warriors didn’t waste time.
“And then we get the first goal in the first 40 seconds,” Barrett said. “We score two in five minutes. OK, we have a chance.”
Barrett’s first goal skimmed in off the crossbar.
“They just kind of looked a little bit startled, like ‘Whoa,’ ” McNerney said of the Blue Comets.
Then it was Grant Bacchus’ turn. He drew a foul, then was on the receiving end of Jerson Hernandez’s free kick, delivering a goal.
“That second goal, I was like, ‘We got it,’ ” McNerney said.
Hipps, who hadn’t come to grips with allowing three first-half goals, perked up when he saw what happened at the other end of the field.
“Noah scored one and I was pretty excited,” Hipps said. “I was really excited because if not it would have looked really bad on me because three goals, zero goals for us. … Then everybody got up. The fans got us up, and then we turned it around.”
Cornell’s recollection showed the growing hope that flowed through the Warriors’ veins.
“We went into it like it was 0-0 second half,” he said. “We kept our heads up. We were talking. We stayed positive. We made sure the bench was up. The bleachers were up. We made sure everybody was just focused and energetic.”
That was all fine, but Western needed goals.
“After we scored that first goal, I had a feeling. I knew we could definitely do it,” Cornell said. “After we scored our second goal, I was like ‘I know we can do this. I know we can.’ ”
With the score 3-2, more than 32 minutes clicked off the clock before the game was finally tied. Barrett tallied the equalizer.
“We scored our third goal with like two minutes left,” Cornell said. “I almost started crying because I was like, ‘We can win this now.’ ”
In the second minute of overtime, Barrett posted his third goal of the night.
For Hipps, the work wasn’t done. In games extending beyond regulation, high school soccer involves two 10-minute overtime periods.
The Warriors held the lead for the first time. Hipps’ best act was still to come.
“It was one-handed,” he said of a save in the second OT period. “It was going to go in and I kind of jumped up and reached for it.”
By then, some of the details became fuzzy for the Warriors. They had achieved their objective.
Perhaps it was difficult to determine which team was more stunned.
“I don’t think anybody could believe it,” McNerney said. “Every time we scored, especially the equalizer and the game winner. We score and our own players are just star-struck, like couldn’t believe it. After the game, I broke down in tears a little bit and I got up and started celebrating. I was just staring at the scoreboard. Like what just happened?”
This is what happened: Western Alamance 4 Asheboro 3
The epilogue
Blake Bacchus said it was a matter of rising to a new level in the second half.
“We got to press them,” he said. “We got to just step on their necks right off the bat and set the tone, and we did. We scored the first goal in 40 seconds. Got another goal. After that we’re just on their throats the whole game. We just carried it into overtime and got to win it all.”
There was a joyous aftermath.
“I think the best part was celebrating with my family and friends afterward and taking all the pictures and celebrating with the team,” Hipps said. “The bus ride home.”
Cornell said: “The ride back was special. Everybody is pumped up. We’re all just shocked. You see everybody’s faces in the pictures. We’re all mouth-open. Like crazy.”
Western’s only loss came August 19 by a 4-3 score at Asheboro (27-3) – more than three months before the championship game. The Warriors trailed no other opponent all season.
Western finished with a 25-1 record. As dominant as that might suggest, it can’t begin to indicate that drama that unfolded to secure that final victory.
“You couldn’t have scripted a better ending. Our one loss was to the team we beat,” McNerney said. “After the first half, it’s like they beat us earlier in the season and now they’re 3-0 up on us and what do we do? And then we come out and we show that we’re the better team. We’ve been working hard, not that they haven’t been working hard, too. We’ve gotten way better from that first loss and proven that we’re the best team in the state.”
All on one night.
“It feels like a dream,” Barrett said a few days later. “It still doesn’t feel real to me right now.”
