By Lucas Sullivan for the Springfield News-Sun

There was a new sport invented at Greenon High School on Monday — underwater soccer.

OK, it probably won’t be part of the Olympic games or sanctioned by the OHSAA anytime soon, but it got Greenon to the district final thanks to freshman Leslie Oliver’s goal less than six minutes into the second half that beat Sidney Lehman Catholic 1-0.

The top-seeded Knights (11-7) will host No. 2 seed Kenton Ridge in the Division II, Dayton 3 district final on Thursday.

“We don’t mind it; we like the mud,” Oliver said. “It was so much fun getting out there and getting dirty.”

It wasn’t that much fun for the dozens of fans who endured 15 to 20 mph winds and rain that seemed to get heavier as the game went on.

“Yeah, we thought about cancelling it,” Greenon coach Ray Raines said. “But (Lehman) wanted to play and when they got here and saw the field we thought about cancelling it again, but the one official said let’s just play.”

What transpired Monday night could have been called soccer, though it resembled teenagers trying to surf a Slip-n-Slide while wearing flip-flops. v

A good proposal might have been to go straight to penalty kicks and avoid the 80-minute beating by Mother Nature.

“All you can really do out there is try to keep your footing,” said Oliver, who resembled more of the muddy field than the rest of her white-uniformed teammates. “Sometimes you kicked the ball and it went nowhere, but that made it fun, too.”

Besides the fans, the only people who may not agree with Oliver were the goalkeepers. Greenon’s Emma McCoy did a nice job of corralling the two shots she faced, but Lehman’s Monica Peitier looked she was trying to catch a greased pig before getting drier gloves.

“It was a very interesting match,” Raines said. “We went defensively strong in the second half and didn’t want to let anything through. The ground was so horrible out there, all you could really do was try and keep the ball out of the goal.”

While most of the time the ball was skipping around the field like shale across a river, Oliver got a clean bounce and buried it in the upper, right side of the net.

“You couldn’t avoid kicking water when you were trying to kick the ball,” said Oliver, while wiping mud from her eyebrows. “Luckily the ball had bounced and it was up in the air. It was just a straight shot in.”v

The goal also proved that the Knights’ season, thus far, has not been a fluke. While most thought Greenon would finish well below .500 in Raines’ first year as coach, the Knights have been doing otherwise.

Lehman is a perfect example. It jumped at the chance to play Greenon, choosing the upper part of the Dayton 3 bracket, instead of facing KR at the sectional draw, thinking the Knights weren’t that tough.

“No one really gave us a shot,” Oliver said. “We have a lot of good young talent on this team. This just proves we can play with anyone.”

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