North Coast Section playoffs: Montgomery boys fall to De La Salle in soccer championship

CONCORD — The Montgomery High boys soccer team was going to meet its match in a North Coast Section title game eventually.

And that match turned out to be fellow Division 1 powerhouse De La Salle.

The Vikings’ three-year run as section champions, including the last Division 1 title and two Division 2 titles prior to that, came to an end in a hard-fought 2-1 loss to the East Bay private school powerhouse on Saturday night.

The section title appearance for Montgomery was its fifth in a row, with a victory against Berkeley in 2020 and back-to-back wins against Richmond in Division 2 prior to that.

“This is the goal,” Montgomery coach Jon Schwan said. “You want to get to this point. You want to make it to this moment. Unfortunately tonight, we just couldn’t pull through.”

For the first few minutes of the game, the Vikings (15-3-5) seemed to control the pace, charging toward the Spartans and even getting a few shots on goal, one of which was saved right at the net.

“I felt like the first 15 or 20 minutes was who we wanted to be to win tonight,” Schwan said. “The ball was moving around. I felt the possession was the way we wanted it to be.”

And then De La Salle started to go on the charge, finally breaking through toward the end of the first half. JP Hernandez found the back of the net for the Spartans with a shot from a few yards out, giving the home team a 1-0 lead at the break.

“We couldn’t capitalize on that, we couldn’t seize that momentum,” Schwan said of the Vikings’ fast start. “We kind of lost control of it. Then they obviously started to take it. They’re really good at what they do.”

Midway through the second half, the Spartans broke through again, this time with Cooper Kennedy connecting for the score to make it a 2-0 game with a little less than 20 minutes left.

The Vikings then started to fight back.

Drayden Ponte was able to grab a pass and shot it right toward the right side of the Spartans’ net, a shot that seemingly appeared ready to go in on its own before being aided into the net by a De La Salle defender, cutting the Vikings’ deficit in half at 2-1.

“I made a diagonal run, and it was just perfect,” Ponte said. “I just got it past the keeper and the defender smacked it right in.”

Ponte wasn’t done, though.

Mere minutes after that, Ponte was set up on a free kick from 25 yards out after a Spartans foul. The ball went off the top of the crossbar.

Schwan knew that if that shot went in, the momentum from that goal could have catapulted them into overtime or even led to a third goal.

“We crawled ourselves back into the game,” Schwan said. “To be honest with you, if we get that second goal — the one that banged off the crossbar there — we might have enough juice to get a third because that would have been a huge momentum shift.”

The Vikings are also the defending CIF NorCal Division 1 champions, defeating Jesuit when the last state playoffs were held in 2020. They will still be able to defend that title, starting this week.

The matchups for the NorCal playoffs will be released on Sunday, but Schwan expects Montgomery to be on the road somewhere for at least the first round.