Pulaski soccer eyes state title after defensive run

The Pulaski boys soccer team found the perfect strategy on its way to a somewhat improbable trip to the WIAA Division 2 state tournament.

Don’t allow any goals.

The Red Raiders didn’t permit a single one in four matches during regional and sectional play, starting with a 2-0 win over Green Bay Southwest.

They beat Sheboygan South in a regional championship and Slinger in a sectional semifinal by the same 1-0 score before playing Fox Valley Lutheran to a scoreless tie through two overtimes in a sectional championship and winning in a 4-3 shootout.

Of the 16 teams in the four divisions that earned a trip to state, the No. 4 seed Pulaski was the only squad that was not a No. 3 seed or higher when regional play started.

But the defense proved to be the difference for a program making its third trip to the D2 state tournament after previously making it as a top seed in both 2014 and 2022.

Pulaski (14-6-3) will play No. 1 seed Wauwatosa East (17-2-1) in a semifinal at 11 a.m. on Nov. 5 at Uihlein Soccer Park in Milwaukee.

“Once you get to postseason play, whatever sport it is, it’s about defending,” Pulaski coach Jeff Schneider said. “Whether it’s soccer or football. We kind of made that one of our priorities. I thought all season long we have done really well defensively. Aside from maybe that game against Neenah where we gave up six goals, they were really good, obviously. If we don’t give up those six goals, this Pulaski team is probably in the top three all time for Pulaski in goals allowed in a season.

“They did really well.”

It’s even more impressive considering the Red Raiders lost senior defender Spencer Holderness after he broke a leg during the third match of the season.

Holderness is one of the best players in the Fox River Classic Conference. He has been bitten by injuries the last two seasons after previously sustaining a season-ending hip injury in a match against De Pere last October.

He was set to be a fixture on the back line for the Red Raiders in his final year.

Pulaski pieced things together in his absence. It helped to have two standouts in the middle with returning all-conference talent Colin Tackmier and fellow senior Gunner Decker.

“Spencer was a leader for us,” Schneider said. “We don’t really do team captains anymore at Pulaski. We assign leadership roles, and the leadership guys carry the ball bags and serve their teammates. He was always really good about that. To see him go down was one of those things where we had to take a step back and find ways to overcome it.”

Part of the way they did it was with Daenen Kehoe, who is one of the junior leadership players. The forward sent his coach a message and told him he’d be willing to play in the back and would be excited to learn a new position.

Kehoe came off the front line and took the role left by Holderness for several matches until Pulaski worked some traditional defenders into the spot.

He returned to his natural position and is second in scoring behind only junior Walker Wozniak with eight goals and 22 points.

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That doesn’t mean there wasn’t more adversity to overcome.

Pulaski started the season 6-0-2, but it struggled when FRCC played kicked off in the middle of September.

The Red Raiders lost back-to-back matches against Green Bay Preble and Sheboygan North and dropped five of seven to erase any chance of competing for the conference championship.

It included three straight defeats by the same 2-0 score against West De Pere, De Pere and Green Bay Notre Dame.

“It goes to the strength of our conference,” Schneider said. “But I think the guys always believed that, no matter what, we can compete with these teams. I’ll be honest, there were some times in practice where they were like, ‘Geez, are we going to get things back on track here?’

“But we had some really good leadership this year, and the guys were able to hold the course and be like, ‘Hey, our goals are what our goals are, and that’s to be in the state championship game.’ Overcoming those losses wasn’t easy, but they found a way to do it and get on a run here.”

Pulaski prepares for matchup against Wauwatosa East

To win a state championship will require the Red Raiders to pull off two upsets – at least by seeding – and none will be more difficult than the semifinal against Tosa East.

East, which also is nicknamed the Red Raiders, ended the season ranked No. 1 in D2 by the Wisconsin Soccer Coaches Association.

Like Pulaski, it has yet to allow a goal in tournament play.

It also has a standout offensive player in senior Luke Gendrich, who has 27 goals and 64 points.

If Pulaski wins, it could face the defending champion and No. 2 seed Whitefish Bay in the title match.

“Once you get down there, everybody is the highest caliber in the state,” Schneider said. “But I will say that we played a lot of high caliber teams this year. That Wauwatosa East team has some flavors of some of the teams that we played. They are a little bit De Pere. They are a little bit of Green Bay Preble.

“I think those are two teams in conference that we competed with. De Pere, we had a 2-0 loss to them and that game could have been either way. The fact that the guys know they can compete with a team like that, I think that puts us in a good mental space. We know we can pull off those wins. Things are going to have to go right. We are probably an underdog, but certainly not as big an underdog as 2022 when we went down there.”

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Pulaski soccer eyes state title after defensive run