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WATERVLIET — For one half, the Buchanan boys soccer team looked primed for a Division 3 district upset of Lakeland Conference champion Berrien Springs.

Unfortunately, the Shamrocks had other ideas in the final 40 minutes of play.

Berrien Springs scored five unanswered goals to defeat Buchanan 5-1 and advance to Friday’s Division 3 district championship match against Hartford at Watervliet. 

Berrien Springs’ Caiden Ward tallied three goals while Majesty Dube and Miles Mathews added goals of their own. Senior Ben Bosse scored in the second half for Buchanan’s lone goal.

“It’s just tough,” said Buchanan Coach Ryan Haines. “They’re just so fast. It’s hard to coach speed, and they have a game plan and they execute very well. Every single time they get the ball, we just really tried our best to just stop everything they could do and to get it away from [Ward]. He played a heck of a game and we just tried our best to just keep the ball away from them, but when someone’s as incredibly quick as he is, it’s tough. “It’s a tough loss but we’ll use it as motivation to just move forward.”

Tied 0-0 in the closing minutes of the first half, Ward beat Buchanan goalkeeper Charlie Cowart to take a 1-0 lead into halftime. In the opening minutes of the second half, Ward found the back of the net again to take a 2-0 lead with 38:13 remaining. Dube and Mathews would add goals of their own to make it a 4-0 game before Ward scored his third and final goal to give the Shamrocks a 5-0 lead with 6:47 remaining in the game.

The Bucks continued to battle, with senior Ben Bosse scoring his final goal in a Buchanan uniform with four minutes remaining to make it a 5-1 game.

Buchanan finished the season with a 12-7-2 record, earning back-to-back 10-plus win seasons for the first time in 15 years. Haines praised seniors Jacob Kuntz, Ben Bosse, Preston Payne, Caiden Troup, Hunter Harrington and Luis Novis for their efforts in rebuilding the soccer program.

“Their freshman and sophomore years, it was a little rough. It’s a totally different program now,” he said. “”We came in and we tried to just flip the script and they did a great job adjusting to a different type of play style. We’re very proud of how they helped us establish that and helped us continue to push it forward.”

While losing this senior class will be tough, the Bucks will return one of the conference’s top players in Easton May as well as a large group of sophomores who will be juniors next year.

“Easton May is going to be a big big person for us,” Haines said. “He had 21 goals and 13 assists to finish off his junior year. He’s going to be a big key player for us next year. We’ve got a good group of nine sophomores as well. We’re losing some heavy hitters, we’re losing Preston Payne, Jacob Kuntz, Hunter Harrington – those three have been with the program all four years, so we’re losing some guys in important spots, but we have enough guys coming up. We can still continue to push through.”