PK lifts Jay

With the clock ticking toward the one-minute mark, Emmitt Reynolds and Drayton Swanson clashed.

Swanson was trying to send the ball for a final Eagle push. Reynolds desperately wanted to keep it on his offensive end.

Reynolds won the battle, then sent the ball to the guy who had already found the net twice.

Levi Muhlenkamp’s ensuing attack proved the difference, as his penalty kick goal with 53.5 seconds remaining lifted the Jay County High School boys soccer team to a 4-3 victory over visiting Delta.

“Stressful, to say the least,” said JCHS coach Rodney Reynolds. “Very competitive. I feel that no matter what, we stayed in the game. … We kept pressure, we kept pressure. It was just a matter of time, and then the penalty came.”

The score had been tied for 26 minutes — Delta tallied all of its goals in the early moments of each half, with the Patriots then responding — when the Swanson was looking to send the ball up the field for a last-minute run at the goal.

Reynolds wouldn’t let him. 

The sophomore left wing fought Swanson for the ball, eventually taking it away and tapping it forward for Muhlenkamp. 

“I saw the ball coming and I was like, ‘I’ve got to get it to him somehow,’” said Reynolds. “So I did a slide, made the take and got up and through ball. And it worked perfectly.”

Already with two goals to his name, Muhlenkamp went on a solo attack. He pushed toward the left post with Delta’s Waylen Stewart alongside him and Hudson Ewing hustling in to help.

The pair of Eagles managed to corral Muhlenkamp, but Stewart took out his legs just outside of the blue turf of the JCHS end zone. He was called for a foul, which occurred inside the 18-yard box and resulted in a penalty kick.

Muhlenkamp had no problem netting the game-winner for a hat trick, sending his shot high and to the left corner where goalkeeper Elijah Bell had no chance to stop it.

“I want it,” said Muhlenkamp. “I love those kind of moments.”

He referenced a situation during his freshman year when he was part of a penalty kick shootout against ACAC rival Heritage.

“I missed it,” he said. “I knew I’m not going to let something like that happen again and I proved that today.”

Delta earned a corner kick and a throw-in during the final 45 seconds, but the Patriots were able to clear both. Goalie Peyton Yowell made a dive to stop the ball in front of Jed Vanator and halt a final Eagles try, then punted the ball high in the air to run off the final five seconds.

The win kept JCHS perfect at 3-0 and marked its second victory over a sectional rival.

“Huge win, huge win,” said Reynolds, whose team also beat sectional foe New Castle 3-0. “Last year we lost to them 3-2 at Delta. Great, great environment to come and host at Jay County with our fans behind us. We really scrap on our field. We don’t want to lose on our field, and that’s big.”

The teams traded the advantage over the course of the evening, with Vanator finding the net first in the opening minutes. Muhlenkamp’s first goal tied the score at 30:51 and Dylan Marentes gave Jay County the lead on a shot that deflected off Bell and in midway through the first half.

Delta again was ready at the start of the second half, with Carson Hall chipping a shot in following a throw-in from Sam Stokes. That goal came just 1:39 after the intermission, and Maddox Huffman scored less than a minute and a half later when he took a pass from Hall, outran the defense and beat Yowell for a 3-2 lead.

Muhlenkamp evened the score at the 27:09 mark when he took a long pass from Marentes and fired a shot. The ball deflected off of Bell and caromed high in the air. As it came back down and bounced, its spin propelled it into the net.

“It’s disappointing,” said Delta coach Tony Pierce, whose team was coming off of a 2-1 loss Tuesday to Mt. Vernon. “We just got out-worked a lot of the game today. They came out, Jay County did, really intent to win this game and physical. And it took us until early in the second half to match that. A couple of unfortunate breaks and we let a couple of goals in.

“We’ve got a young team. They let a lot of stuff get in their heads today. We didn’t do a good job of responding after they scored goals.”