Bath’s Connor Core dribbles against Elida’s Conor Rader during Monday’s match at the Elida Sports Complex.
Richard Parrish | The Lima News
ELIDA — There are always two sides to tie.
On Monday night, Elida (1-3-3, 1-1-2 WBL) felt like it hadn’t made the most of its opportunities and Bath (3-4-2, 1-1-1 WBL) was satisfied with battling back from a second-half deficit.
It wasn’t the result that either side was looking for, but the league contest ended in a 1-1 draw.
The end result is that both teams remain separated by one point (Elida 5, Bath 4) in the WBL standings.
“It’s definitely not the outcome we wanted,” Elida coach Tom Thomas said. “We played some good soccer tonight, just not our best. We had a lot of chances and a lot of opportunities and we just couldn’t find the back of the net a second time.”
Elida had 14 corner kicks in the game, but Bath’s defense stood tall on every one of them.
“We put a ton of pressure on our back four guys,” Bath coach Levi Smith said. “We don’t sub them out, they all play 80 (minutes) and we have a fantastic keeper that we sometimes use as another striker. We’ll deal with corners when they come. I trust those guys fully and they proved it to me tonight. For them to kick 14 corners and not get a goal off one, it’s very impressive that we can handle that.”
The game remained scoreless for just under the first 62 minutes, then both teams scored within 30 seconds of each other.
Elida broke through first on a lead pass from Austin Gudakunst to Eben Jackson with 18:03 left.
At the 17:33 mark, Bath’s Ethan Pitson launched a free kick off the head of Peyton Liles for the equalizer.
Smith said the positive response his team had to going down 1-0 is something they’ve excelled at this season.
“That’s been our thing this year,” he said. “We’ve responded really well to adversity. Our center-back got hurt and had to come out for a little bit tonight. That’s the first time he’s been out all year. We also have our striker and some midfielders playing hurt and we had two guys out tonight. For us to come away with a draw, I’m pretty happy.”
Following the tie, Elida remains in fifth place in the Western Buckeye League standings with Bath on its heels in sixth. Every team in the WBL, outside of Shawnee, has less than 10 points.
Both teams are looking up at the Indians (12), St. Marys (9), Ottawa-Glandorf (6) and Celina (6).
“The WBL outside of Shawnee is wide open the rest of the way,” Smith said. “We’ve been chasing our demons this year. We finally got rid of Kenton which was huge for us. Elida was the next one we circled and we had so many chances tonight to get shots off, we just couldn’t connect on that final pass. A 1-1 result against a team like this makes me feel good but I know there’s so much more we can do.”
Scoring Summary
ELIDA — Eben Jackson (Austin Gudakunst assist) — 18:03, 2nd
BATH — Peyton Liles (Ethan Pitson assist) — 17:33, 2nd
Reach Chris Howell at 567-242-0468 or on Twitter/X at @Lima_Howell
