By Greg Bates
Sports Editor
SUAMICO – Inevitably each season, the winner of the Bay Port-Notre Dame Academy regular-season
match plays a huge determining factor in which team will win the Fox River Classic Conference title.
This year is no different.
When Bay Port and Notre Dame met on Thursday night, the implications were meaningful. The winner
would keep pace with first-place De Pere. The loser would possibly be out of the race.
When it was all said and done, both defenses came to play. Both offenses had their chances, but neither
team could capitalize. The outcome, a 0-0 tie in a hard-fought battle at Bay Port.
“Notre Dame’s a good team. I knew it was going to be a battle based on who they’ve tied and who
they’ve played,” Bay Port coach Travis Herber said. “We’ve got a good team, but we are just struggling
at times to score when the opportunities are there, so I knew it was going to boil down to whoever took
the chance to score and put the ball in the net. They had a couple (opportunities), we had a couple and
neither team took advantage of the chances they had.”
Both keepers played well. Bay Port’s Brady Wazny was tested all night and came through. Notre Dame’s
Arturo Ottum-Cortez registered big saves when he needed to.
“Defensively, our keeper had the best game of the season, so we’re going to build off that,” Notre Dame
coach Michael Prudisch said. “He kept us in the game a couple of times there. Definitely some wins on
the defensive half — attacking is now where we’re going to focus our energy now moving forward to
make sure we put goals away and get wins instead of ties.”
The majority of the match was played in Notre Dame’s offensive end. But it was Bay Port that dictated
the tempo in the opening 40 minutes.
“Bay Port came out fast and hard like they always do and kind of put us on our heels and we started to
try and play their style of play, just attacking quickly, sending things forward, and that’s not who we are,
so we struggled,” Prudisch said. “Second half, we regrouped, got back to our style of play, possessing it,
slowing it down and I think we kind of dominated the second half. A couple bounces off the post a
different way and that one might go our way.”
Herber liked how his defense played vs. Notre Dame — in this game and in past years.
“If you go back and you look, no one’s beaten us in four years in conference — it’s either we win or it’s a
tie,” Herber said. “No one’s given us a loss in four years in conference, and that speaks volumes with
those men that are on the field. That’s what we hold over our heads, no one’s going to beat us in
conference. It might be a little tougher road now with two ties, but I’ll tell you what, Notre Dame’s got
two or three (ties). It’s going to take a lot to win this conference this year with us, De Pere, Notre Dame
and Preble all battling.”
Notre Dame, ranked No. 1 in Division 3 in the latest Wisconsin Soccer Coaches Association Poll, was
coming off a tie against Green Bay Preble on Tuesday night.
The Tritons (10-0-3, 2-0-3 FRCC) tried to get Emmett Lawton — the conference’s leading scorer with 21
goals — some quality touches. However, Bay Port countered with shutdown defense. The Pirates (10-1-
3, 3-0-2 FRCC) used defender Brock Gorzelanczyk to shadow Lawton all night.
Prudisch tried to get production from the rest of the team, but the Tritons were short-handed. Notre
Dame was without a few players due to injury and another three or four players were on college visits.
“We knew that they were going to focus on Emmett, so we move him around and try and keep their
defense on their toes,” Prudisch said. “But by doing that, we’re moving their defense around, we’re
hopefully creating openings. There were a couple times where they were sending guys after Emmett and
we had other guys getting in on the far side, and just struggled to get them in the right position to get
them in on net.”