Coming on the counterattack, Koopman dribbled past defenders until losing possession as he entered the box, but Brayden Korzeniewski collected the loose ball and slotted it home to give the Hillbillies the lead and the momentum en route to a 2-0 victory in the Class B prequarterfinals on Tuesday at Fredonia State University.

“I think, especially given our last game was a 2-0 loss to this team, it was important to have a positive tone setter in the beginning,” Fredonia head coach Mason Redmond said. “From there, we were a lot calmer and were able to possess a little bit more than on Thursday.”

Shortly after No. 5 Fredonia got on the board, the Hillbillies were right back at it and it was Koopman driving home a loose ball among the chaos in the box during the 22nd minute.

“Both of them have been really solid offensive weapons this year,” Redmond said about his top scorers. “As far as overlapping with each other or just kind of winning 50-50 balls, they’re both good out of the air. They’re our two leading scorers for a reason. Where it would be nice to play possession sometimes, it is nice to have those direct attack options, too.”

Fredonia’s Ryan Koopman, far left, falls as he watches his shot trickle into the net during Section VI Class B prequarterfinal soccer action at Fredonia State on Tuesday. OBSERVER Photo by Christian Storms

Southwestern came close to getting a goal back just a few minutes later after Ryan Ohl made a great run down the right wing and delivered a cross to a sliding Wilson Genareo, but the shot was deflected high.

“It was a pretty equally battled game, for the most part,” Southwestern head coach Jason Deering said. “We really wanted to win that. We showed up today. We wanted to battle through and that’s really what we wanted to do. We got the win on Thursday against them and we knew from our earlier contest that we were just as good as them. … It was well played. It was what I could ask for from one of our Southwestern teams.”

The Fredonia defense kept Southwestern off the board in the first half, despite several scares that were near misses or turned aside by Luka Paoletta who finished with six saves in the clean sheet.

“Our game plan every game is to come out flying,” Deering stated. “We always set out to set the tone of the game, fly around. It worked well for most of the game.”

Both Koopman and Korzeniewski nearly added to the Fredonia lead in the 49th and then 57th minute respectively, but Cooper Charles was there to turn them away. Charles made 13 stops as he worked to keep the 12-seeded Trojans within striking distance the whole game.

In the face of desperate pressure from Southwestern with its season on the line, the Fredonia defense stood tall as it worked to flip the script from a 2-0 league loss last week to a 2-0 playoff victory.

“It’s definitely very satisfying getting this win,” Redmond said, “especially since we had a really good regular season. I wanted to kind of run into form at the right moment. I’m excited to go up to whoever we’re playing on Friday.”

The Hillbillies travel to No. 4 Medina (15-2-0) for a quarterfinal matchup at 3:30 p.m. Friday.

“I haven’t watched a ton of them yet,” Redmond said about Medina. “I watched their game against Newfane, but at this point I was saying to our players that every game in the playoffs is going to be a good team. We’re not sleeping on them, but we’re certainly ready for them and will get back at it tomorrow.”

Southwestern finished its season with a 4-12-1 record, but the young group is already eager to get back to the quality of play the Trojans have grown accustomed to.

“It was a tough season for us. We always have high expectations,” Deering said about his group. “Even coming in with a young team, we just try to keep the expectations high, something to battle for. A tough season like this season and having the success that we’ve had over the last couple years with this program it can only be motivation. They have to use it. The talk already through the younger players is that they’re already figuring out what they’re doing to get on the field and to be working. That’s what we push and really how we keep our program going.”