Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Ben Sanders
For Leader Publications

VICKSBURG — Edwardsburg’s Brayden Fischer was right on time with another game-winning goal.

Fischer scored with 2:38 left to give the Eddies a 2-1 win over St. Joseph in Thursday’s Division 2 boys soccer district championship game. Edwardsburg defeated Lakeshore 2-1 in Tuesday’s semifinals, also on a goal by Fischer with 2:38 left.

“It’s so exciting, everyone’s so pumped,” Fischer said. “You wait the whole game to do that, and it’s just awesome.”

Edwardsburg (16-1-1) advances to play Plainwell at 5 p.m. Tuesday in the regional semifinals at Portage Central.

Maverick Gates scored Edwardsburg’s first goal in the 23rd minute, and that lead held up for almost the entire game. St. Joseph (15-3-2) spent much of the second half on the attack, and finally broke through on a shot by Remy Kelm with just 4:50 left on the clock.

“Our culture is to never say die, always keep fighting,” Edwardsburg coach Sean Jesse said. “They just have that mentality. It was incredibly stressful the last five minutes. This team is resilient, they find ways to win, they find ways to put themselves in great spots.”

Edwardsburg responded with a through ball from Gates that put Fischer one-on-one with the goalkeeper, and he finished to put the Eddies back up for good.

“I was running down the middle, and I remember seeing Mav play a ball over my head,” Fischer said. “My back was to the goal, and I turned, and I saw no one was there, so I just started running really fast. I just shot it, and it was crazy.”

St. Joseph’s last-ditch efforts to equalize were unsuccessful, and Edwardsburg claimed its second district title in three years.

“We got the goal, and then just got a little too crazy, and it happened,” St. Joseph coach John Brown said. “That’s part of the game, that’s playoff soccer. I thought Edwardsburg did a phenomenal job. They worked extremely hard. They wanted it really, really bad.”

St. Joseph defeated Edwardsburg 2-0 in the regular-season opener for both teams, which remains the Eddies’ only loss.

“I don’t think either team is close to the same as we were then,” Jesse said. “We circled that, we knew St. Joe was incredibly good, we kind of figured we’d face them in the district championship. We wanted that revenge, we wanted that moment to get it back to show how good we really are, and we made it.”

Edwardsburg was the district’s top seed and had a first-round bye. St. Joseph defeated Vicksburg in its opener, then had to go all the way to a penalty shootout to beat Coldwater in Tuesday’s semifinal.

“We looked tired, wore out,” Brown said. “That’s the difference of not getting the one seed and having to go through Coldwater to get here. We tried to recover (Wednesday), and it’s just unfortunate. The guys gave everything they possibly could, but it was not our A-game. The guys grinded, I could not have asked for more out of them.”

---

Edwardsburg 2, St. Joseph 1

Goals — Edwardsburg: Maverick Gates, Brayden Fischer. St. Joseph: Remy Kelm.

Assists — Edwardsburg: Gates, Zach Jacobs.

Shots on goal — St. Joseph 5, Edwardsburg 4. Saves — Law Gates (E) 4, Ruben Holleman (SJ) 2.

Records — Edwardsburg 16-1-1, St. Joseph 15-3-2.