Hawks advance with 6-2 win

DONNELLSON – The Central Lee Hawks notched their 12th win of the season Tuesday night in a 6-2 win over Sigourney Keota in the Class 1A Substate 5 quarterfinals in Donnellson.
It’s the most wins in the program since 2019 when the Hawks finished the season 11-8.
But Head Coach Justin Schau was subdued after the Hawks gave up two second-half goals to the 1-13 Savages.
“It’s like we can’t put a complete game together,” he said.
“You look at games and our defense is shut down, and we got games where our offense is constantly attacking and scoring. I thought we were putting a complete game together and then it was like our defense did some bonehead stuff that hurt us. I'm happy for them, though, because they come out here and we're a 12-win team. I'm happy for them yet I'm still a coach right now.”
Sigourney pushed the Hawks back to the net on their first possession off the whistle with a shot just 35 seconds into the match, but the Hawks' defense, which has been solid all year, rallied as Brayden McCarty lifted a ball up over the half line where Mason Sanders tracked it down and outraced the Sigourney defense, firing a shot that caromed off the right post into the back of the net at 38:19.
Sigourney pushed the Hawk defense again off the restart and fired another shot about a minute later that was saved by sophomore Mason Dixon in the Central Lee keep. He had five saves on the night.
Zach Estrada would then take another nice pass from the right side of the offense and fired it at the goal about 45 feet back and center. The shot blasted past Ty Goldman who dived to the right too late.
It was one of three goals Estrada would put in in the first half. He would score again at 22:48 on a run up the middle where he executed a slide kick going straight into the left side of the goal for a 3-0 lead.
His third goal came with about 8 minutes left off a double assist from Jaedyn Oglesby and Colton Taft.

Central Lee would get two more goals, one from Peter Seyb and the other from McCarty. Sigourney would score off a penalty kick rebound at the 20-minute mark. Jones had the save but the ball squirted back out into a scrum and was popped in out of the melee. They scored again with about three minutes left on a goal from the right side of the offense to set the final score at 6-2.
Schau and Estrada both said it could have been his best game of the season.
“Zach Estrada had his best game of the whole season, as far as an effort goes. He's always technical, but his effort was out of this world tonight,” Schau said.
“His speed, I don't know where his speed came from tonight because he wasn’t that fast all year. There’s a reason why he plays the position he does for us and that’s because he knows the game better than anybody on the field. He’s one of those kids that can just control the ball and makes the right choices most of the time.”
Estrada said he thinks the record for goals is five in a game and the thought wasn’t out of his mind.
“I felt like I could run for days tonight,” he said. “I felt like the balls were there and I could just run right at the goal.”
He missed a couple shots in the second half in a series where the Hawks had five shots in a span of about 10 minutes, but they couldn’t convert.
“When we press super hard and close down their space, it works really good for us, but when we just dribble around  and they send three balls over, it just screws our game over,” Estrada said.
“I just wanted to get out there and just keep going at the beginning of the game. I just felt good tonight. I just want to go out there and play a good game.”
McCarty had two assists to go with one each from Taft, Oglesby, Estrada, and Sanders.
Tuesday’s game will be at 7 p.m. on the turf at Mediapolis. Schau said they’ve played on turf a couple times this season, including a game earlier this year in Mediapolis where the Hawks were shut out 3-0.