Freedom: Eagles Baseball Clinches State Spot, Boys Soccer Falls Short

By Jeff Schneider 
Special to Viva Loudoun 
South Riding (May 30, 2012) – Freedom High School junior Ryan Adams pitched his second postseason shutout to help the Eagles secure their first ever state tournament spot. Freedom extended their winning streak to nine game with the 3-0 victory over Forest Park and the Eagles will host Hylton tonight at 6 p.m. in the Northwest Region Finals.

The Eagles men’s soccer team saw their season come to an end in a 3-1 loss to Colonial Forge.


Northwest Region Baseball Semifinals: Freedom 3, Forest Park 0 
The Eagles were locked into a scoreless struggle early in the game. Both starting pitchers were shutting down batters with a combination of great pitch selection and big defensive plays.

Freedom (18-6) looked like they would finally take advantage of a couple of hits in the bottom of the fourth inning as they were able to load the bases with no outs. However Forest Park was able to get out of the inning without surrendering a run.

An inning later that would all change.

Much like the fourth, the fifth inning for the Eagles started out with two runners getting into scoring position with no outs. This time Freedom took full advantage of the situation. Dylan Teal hit a long sacrifice fly to left field and drove in Dylan Chapman for the game’s first run. The sac-fly also allowed Joey Plesce to advance to third.

Kyle Wrighte was up to bat next and hit a sacrifice fly to center field. His hit was not as deep as Teal’s and Plesce was just able to beat the ball to the plate to give his Eagles a 2-0 lead.

“I let the boys play early on,” Jason Treon, Freedom’s head coach, said. “We started playing a little more small ball [in the fifth] and a couple things went our way.”

Freedom brought home one more run the following inning as Zach Newell singled up the middle with Matt Malacane on third.

The Eagles offense took some time to get going and wasn’t as dominant as it had been in past games, but the pitching and defense did their part to get to states in their first season in AAA.

“It feels amazing,” Adams said. “It feels like a weight has been lifted off of our shoulders. This [getting to states] was the goal of our program all year long.”

Northwest Region Boys Soccer Semifinals: Colonial Forge 3, Freedom 1
Unfortunately for the Eagles soccer team, the outcome was not the same as baseball.

Colonial Forge was able to jump out to a strong start as they controlled the ball in the Freedom zone for a large part of the early stage of the game.

Freedom was able to create some scoring opportunities, but the Eagles were turned aside by the Colonial Forge defense and keeper.

With just under 28 minutes to go in the opening half, Freedom got its first prime opportunity on a long pass down the field. The shot from the top of the box was blocked out of touch by a Colonial Forge defender. Freedom was able to keep the pressure on following the ensuing throw in.

Around the 25 minute mark, the game still proved to be a defensive struggle as both teams were able to get penetration into the opposing team’s half, but the defenses denied any goal scoring opportunities.

With 21:15 left in the first, it looked like Freedom had jumped out to a 1-0 lead. James Paredes made a stellar move to get past his defender and break in at the keeper. His shot eluded the keeper and a Freedom player slid in and put the ball in the net but the goal was disallowed as the officials ruled the Eagle sliding in had touched the ball with his hand.

The disallowed goal put a damper on the Freedom team and seemed to be the cause of a three minute drought of opportunities. However, Freedom was able to shake its disbelief of the call and had another big opportunity to break the scoreless game around the 18 minute mark.

William Morrill was able to steal the ball away from a Colonial Forge player and drive down the right flank. Morrill used his speed to get into the 18 with a teammate trailing him on the other side of the field. With one player to beat, Morrill took a hard shot that went just wide left of the net.

It seemed to take a while for Colonial Forge to get its first real opportunity to beat Freedom keeper Jimmy LaMantia. With 8:30 left in the first half, LaMantia came up with a huge save off of a header by a Colonial Forge player from point blank range.

Colonial Forge seemed to build some momentum off of their first big opportunity and tested LaMantia several more times in the final minutes of the first half. Despite a late rally by Colonial Forge, the opening half seemed evenly matched as both teams were able to control the ball in the attacking zone for roughly the same amount of time.

However, Freedom clearly had more shots and opportunities to take the lead. Nonetheless, neither team was able to score and they went into the half all knotted up at 0-0.

The second half started off in Freedom’s favor as Paredes became the first player to officially put the ball in the net. Paredes gave his team the 1-0 advantage; unfortunately for Freedom it would be their last goal of the night.

Despite being in a hole early into the second half, Colonial Forge got its offense rolling on all cylinders during a five minute span, starting with 26:30 left in the game.

Colonial Forge tied up the game on a penalty kick that sailed over the outstretched hands of Freedom goaltender LaMantia. Roughly two minutes later, Colonial Forge took its first lead of the night as they developed a breakaway and were able to get the ball past LaMantia.

The insurance goal was chipped in as LaMantia rushed towards the player in an attempt to prevent the shot.

Freedom was unable to overcome the 2-goal deficit in what was a tale of two halves.

Colonial Forge’s offense proved to be too much to handle in the second half of play; while the number of opportunities Freedom was able to create diminished drastically from the opening half.