The Rider Raiders won another tournament on Saturday, but they didn't leave Memorial Stadium feeling like they were on top of the world.
The Raiders won Pool B thanks to a hard-earned 2-0 victory over North Dallas on Saturday morning, but Keller ended Rider's run of perfection in 2012 with a 1-0 victory in the afternoon at Memorial Stadium.
The Raiders (12-1) were one of three local teams to take first place in the tournament. Wichita Falls High School won Pool A, going 3-0-1, while the Rider Black team won Pool D with four shutouts. Canyon won Pool C and collected the most points of any bracket winner.
The day started normal for Rider, meaning Christian Okeke scored and the Raiders pitched their 10th shutout, beating North Dallas. It ended with a loss to the 3-3 Indians.
"Are we good? Yes. Can we be beaten on any day? Yes," Rider coach Josh Hill said. "It's time to refocus. It's a good attention-grabber. We might have been getting a little too confident.
"It didn't go our way and we were a little flat, but we stuck together after the PK call and tried to get a goal."
Against North Dallas, Okeke scored on a penalty kick, his second foul drawn against a keeper in as many days, in the 47th minute.
The Rider defense and keeper Drake Szczepinski, who made one great save and several alert plays to keep Keller at bay, can usually make one goal stand. But the Raiders added some insurance against North Dallas. It was a thing of beauty on a play started by midfielder and team captain Colton Kowalick. He placed a direct pass to Okeke in the middle just in front of two defenders, who waited for the star forward to make a move and in the meantime left Okeke a wide-open angle to tap the ball to Ruben Flores, who wasted no time beating the keeper to the far post for his fifth goal.
"I saw Christian making a run, he makes so many good runs and he's so fast you just have to put it in his area code and he'll make a great play on it and score goals," Kowalick said. "They're a solid team and they played really well. The first half we played flat, but the second half we stepped our game up and put some goals in."
But in the afternoon match, Keller came out aggressive early and paid special attention to Okeke. When Rider committed a foul in the box in the 70th minute, the Indians took the lead on Skylar Simmonds' penalty kick.
Goalkeeper Richard Mayse had a big day, making sure-handed saves and directing traffic in front of him. When a late run by Okeke began to look dangerous he came out and forced the Rider star to play wide around him and the Raider ran out of room.
"He had a good day," Hill said of the keeper. And the Indians tried to keep a couple of bodies really tight on Okeke to make sure the 15-goal scorer didn't pad his total.
"We had a couple of things tactically we wanted to do," Keller coach Jason Bates said. "We squeezed them in the midfield and tried not to let (Okeke) get a lot of chances. He's good enough that he's going to get a couple chances, but we have to hope our goalie makes the save and he missed a couple.
"We struggled in the first half of our first game Thursday (in a loss to North Dallas), but we really had 3½ good games. I'm real proud of the boys. We just got a little bit better this weekend."
The format of four tournaments in one allowed a lot of teams to leave feeling they got better. One of those was definitely Old High.
The Pool A champion Coyotes blasted Canyon Randall 6-0 before fighting Duncanville to a 1-1 tie as WFHS keeper Erick Gardea saved the day a few times.
The Coyotes, 4-3-3 on the season, went 3-0-1 in the tournament. They whipped Canyon Randall 6-0 on Saturday morning and had to battle through some tired legs against a Duncanville squad playing its only match of the day.
Old High scored in the 11th minute when Daniel Tays looped a ball into the box and it took a high bounce to fool the goalkeeper. Alexis Hernandez ran on and finished it for the goal.
But there was no momentum built as Duncanville picked up the pace and easily won two balls in the midfield leading to an Antonio Mendoza goal off an assist by Eloy Arevalo in the 17th minute.
Gardea had one outstanding save in the first half and a couple more in the second half, including one with 2:30 remaining to close out Duncanville's final chance. The Panthers had more chances for most of the match, but were also to find the open net on a couple of occasions.
"Erick had a great day today and he made some saves that we thought were going in," WFHS coach Sam Reed said. "It was a big game for him."
