Boys soccer: Kero sparks Metea Valley past Neuqua Valley

Metea Valley senior Tyler Kero defender was smiling from ear to ear and enjoying his deserved moment on Wednesday evening.

The senior scored his first goal for the Mustangs to help them earn a 3-0 victory over Neuqua Valley during a Class 3A Metea Valley regional semifinal.

"Sitting back I have to defend every game so I hadn't scored in a long time," Kero said. "It's the most fun. I'm not going to lie. I don't think I've scored here since freshman year."

Maybe coach Josh Robinson has found his new goal-scoring machine just in time for the playoffs?

"I've been asking him to move me to striker for two or three years now," Kero joked. "But he will not listen to me. I've never been allowed to play an attacking position at Metea Valley."

Happiness was certainly flowing strong in Aurora as the Mustangs (9-6-6) advanced to Saturday afternoon's regional championship game. They will face West Aurora (16-4-1). The Blackhawks just beat the Mustangs 1-0 last Thursday.

Kero had provided all the offense the Mustangs would need with 30:27 left in the first half.

"I've been getting more in the box at the end of the season, trying to win the ball," he said. "It happened to bounce down in the box at the point right in front of me so I couldn't miss it."

Then, just 63 seconds later, the Mustangs extended their lead on a gorgeous cross from sophomore Colin Bastianoni to junior Alex Krehl.

"I'm always telling Colin to look for me and he finally did it and it worked," Krehl said. "He likes to get the goals himself, but he saw me looking across and I'm screaming his name and then I just had to get on the end of it."

And that pretty much deflated the hopes of the upset-minded Wildcats.

"We just demoralized them then," Krehl said. "It was so important to hit them again so quickly and put them down."

It was eerily similar to when the Mustangs beat the Wildcats 2-1 on Oct. 1, but in that game the Wildcats rallied to tie the game, both goals coming on a pair of free kick goals.

"It was almost a carbon copy of the conference game," Wildcats coach Arnoldo Gonzalez said. "It was almost like reliving that moment, but we felt like we were going to get one just by the way we were playing because we were a lot more solid knocking the ball around then they were."

Tadiwa Nyamundur appeared to take a knock for the Wildcats in the box but wasn't awarded a PK. That obviously would've impacted the game, but sometimes those calls aren't made or officials see it differently.

"We're not blaming that at all, but it could've been a different story there if they call the PK," Gonzalez said. "It's just unfortunate because of the way we've been playing these last several games and it's so hard to come back from 2-nil."

Junior Mark Thurow added a goal with 3:03 left to complete the scoring as the Wildcats (2-11-5) were shut out for the 10th time.

Despite his new offensive heroics Kero had plenty to do with that while goalkeeper Gandhi Cruz earning the clean sheet.

"We have good chemistry in the back and we're really smart with how we position ourselves," Kero said. "We know when to step and when to drop off and we like to play really compact which makes it hard for teams to score for us. We've used it for the whole year and it's been a good thing."