MACON – Senior Devin Olson scored two goals in a six-minute span in the second half, helping Decatur rally for a 3-2 victory over top-ranked East Hall in the Class AAA boys soccer championship game Thursday at Mercer University’s Five Star Stadium.
Decatur (16-3-1) trailed 2-1 with a little more than 17 minutes remaining when Olson took a long crossing pass from Tuck Rodi and scored from the right side to tie the game. Olson then scored the game-winner with 11:24 left when he headed in a long pass from Lucas Ryter. The Bulldogs held on in the final minutes, not allowing East Hall (21-2) a good shot at a tying goal.
“He has been phenomenal,” Decatur coach David Harbin said of Olson. “He is a very skilled player, and he’s scored some big goals in some big games for us. He’s one of those special kids who just has a will to score goals, and goals that he may not be supposed to score, he finds a way to get it in the back of the net.”
Decatur’s defense did a great job containing East Hall’s Leo Toledo, who came into the match with 78 goals in 22 games. Toledo, a Mercer signee who was playing on his future home field, recorded one goal when he outfought a defender for the ball and scored from 10 yards out to give East Hall a 2-1 lead with 11:21 to play in the first half. But he was limited to just a couple of other shots and was not a factor in the second half.
Decatur scored first when Nathan Tumperi’s hard shot from about 10 yards out hit the crossbar, ricocheted off of a defender and went into the net less than five minutes into the game. East Hall answered four minutes later when Oscar Gonzalez scored off a deflection.
“These guys have just battled adversity throughout the year,” Harbin said. “They’re incredibly tough, and they have a lot of faith in what they’ve done. They’ve fully bought in to what the program has been teaching, and this was how they deserved to be rewarded.”
The championship was the third in Decatur history. The Bulldogs won the all-classification title in 1977 and the AA/A championship in 2003. East Hall was seeking its first state title.
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