GALION — The Galion boys soccer defeated River Valley 5-2 on Tuesday night to send the seniors off to the postseason tournament with a win on their night.
Senior Sam Albert tallied a hat trick to lead the Tigers to the win.
Walker Frankhouse got the scoring started for the Tigers when he was able to knock in a rebound off a corner kick at the 38:01 mark.
At the 28:25 mark, Albert netted the first of his three goals when he broke free and was able to sail the ball over the River Valley goalkeeper’s head to make it 2-0 in favor of Galion.
The Vikings quickly bounced back after the Tigers’ goal. At the 27:49 mark, Owen Richards scored to cut the deficit to 2-1.
Albert then knocked the ball off the post and into the net to give Galion another first-half goal and a 3-1 lead. There was no shortage of offense early on in this one.
River Valley (6-11, 2-4 MOAC) answered with an effort goal by Logan Gibson at the 12:50 mark to pull the Vikings to within 3-2 at halftime.
“We just communicated more. Those two goals were just miss-communication and miss-timing. It wasn’t anything to complicated to fix,” Galion head coach Eric Palmer said about his team’s defensive lapses in the first half.
Frankhouse scored his second goal two minutes into the second half to make it a 4-2 game.
Albert completed the hat trick at the 10:38 mark for Galion.
“We recently have moved (Albert) from attacking mid to forward and it has opened our offense a lot. It is hard to guard him and Walker both in one game. He came up big for us for sure,” Palmer said.
With the win Galion (10-4-1, 5-1 MOAC) picked up their 10th victory and secured second place in the Mid Ohio Athletic Conference. Ontario (10-4-1, 6-0 MOAC) won the conference championship.
“It’s indescribable. Our goal was to go for first place and we had to re-adjust, we’re happy to celebrate that,” Palmer said. “When we lost the Ontario game it came a mission to secure the second place in the MOAC we did that tonight.”
Galion begins postseason play on Thursday, Oct. 21 at Huron. Kickoff is set for 5 p.m.
Huron (10-3-3) defeated Galion 4-0 on Aug. 25. It was the second match of the season for both clubs.
