Piedmont High School’s boys soccer team recorded a 4-2 win over visiting Urban-San Francisco on Feb. 22 at Witter Field in the second round of the North Coast Section Division 4 playoffs.
The top-seeded Highlanders advance to the semifinals on Feb. 26 when they will host No. 4 San Rafael.
Logan Faucher and Gianluca Bini each scored two goals to lead Piedmont in what was a physical game from the opening whistle. Bodies flew around the turf all evening.
“I think that the refs allowed it to get that way to be honest,” Highlanders coach Ben Russell said. “If the ref calls it at the start, straight away it’s going to be a different game. It’s always going to escalate with teenage boys.”
Said Urban coach Chris Flanagan, “I felt we had two teams that had the same game plan. They wanted to come out, play with physicality, play a little more direct. I think we were canceling each other out. I’m not surprised that we had two penalty kicks at some point.”
L-R Piedmont; Logan Faucher, Elias Reed-miguel, Bosco Lorin, Harper Mand, Henry Devan, and Jacob-Rodriguez chase after the ball
The game was scoreless through most of the first half. In the 32nd minute, Bini scored on a penalty kick to make it 1-0 Piedmont at the half.
Micah Chan got an equalizer in the 48th minute. The Highlanders went up for good in the 55th minute on Faucher’s first goal. Jimmy Lagios was on the left side and centered it to Faucher who let fly to the lower left corner.
In the 66th minute, Bini got a ball in the left corner and got it to Faucher in front. Faucher took the ball off his chest, settling it for himself, then putting it in the left corner.
“The first one, kind of routine,” Faucher said. “You practice that every day. On that back post, cross the keeper.”
“The second one, that’s probably my pride and joy. I’ll probably never do that ever again. It came off Luca’s head, took it on my chest. It went a bit higher than I would have liked it to. I’m just happy I made contact with it.”
Faucher said he has never scored more than two goals in a high school game.
“That was probably one of my favorite moments of high school soccer,” he said. “You can’t really beat that. Go for three the next time.”
It was a huge goal because just a minute later, Will Ferguson answered for the Blues from up front cutting it back down to 3-2.
Urban kept the pressure up and produced a few chances late. Finally, in stoppage time, Bini converted for his second goal and Piedmont advanced.
“Throughout the season we’ve had a little bit of trouble but we started to get back into our groove,” Faucher said. “We just have to keep playing like we did tonight and we’ll be perfectly set for the rest of NCS.”
He also talked about the difference between club and high school soccer.
“It’s a lot different playing for a club and high school,” Faucher said. “High school is a lot more physical, it’s a lot more direct. We try to take advantage of that back line being so high. When they set back we try to draw pressure to us in the backfield and try to get forward again.
“Club coaches want the game to be more refined and more technical. High school it’s kind of go out there, run around and score of goals.”
So which is more fun? High school.
“It’s so much more fun, are you kidding me,” Faucher said. “You get to just bomb it up the field instead of sitting back playing passes trying to get through teams. Here we can just go straight over the top of them. In my opinion, much easier.”