GORHAM — During Cheverus’ run to the Class A state boys’ soccer championship last year, sweeper Andrei Vile scored more goals in five playoff games than he did the entire regular season.
On Tuesday, Vile, a senior sweeper who scored once in the regular season, picked up his playoff touch when he scored the eventual winner for the seventh-seeded Stags in a 2-1 win over No. 2 Gorham in the Class A South quarterfinals.
With Cheverus leading 1-0 courtesy of a second-half goal by Alex Nason, Vile came up from the backfield to take a free kick, and sent a high-arching drive toward teammate Brady Levesque. The ball cleared Levesque’s header attempt by mere inches, hit the grass and bounced past the Rams’ keeper.
“I’m not trying to score on something like that, I’m just trying to look for teammates who can do something with the ball,” said Vile. “I’m trying to get the ball to parts of the field where other players can score. It was a lucky goal. I was trying to get that to Brady for a header.”
The goal may have been lucky, but without Vile’s impressive play on the other end of the pitch, it may not have amounted to the winner. He anchored a defense that withstood a ferocious offensive attack from the speedy Rams forwards.
“He’s our leader back there,” said Cheverus Coach Colin Minte. “He’s, in my opinion, the best defender I’ve seen in the state, hands down. He’s got great speed, and to match that great speed he’s phenomenal out of the air.”
Gorham continued to get great pressure throughout the contest even with Vile playing as well as he did, but the Rams were met with one save after another as senior keeper Jake Tomkinson turned away 12 shots.
“He kept us in the game in the first half,” said Minte. “They were generating a lot of dangerous opportunities on set pieces – on free kicks and corner kicks. They had six or seven corner kicks in the first half.”
Added Tomkinson: “That wasn’t just me, it was the defense too. We knew we were going to have to deal with the pressure. They’re a good team – they’re fast, they can finish and they’re skilled. We just tried to be ready for it.”
Erik Andreasen scored for the Rams – 20 seconds after Vile’s goal.
“Even after we scored the first goal, they put a ton of pressure on us right away,” said Minte. “That’s Gorham though. They’re going to come at you 80 minutes, every single minute. They work really hard and they have a lot of speed throughout field.
“I was a little bit disappointed we gave that goal up so quickly after we got the two-goal lead; it put a lot more pressure on ourselves. We’ve been here before. We know that when it comes to the playoffs you have to play good team defense. We bent a little bit but we didn’t break.”
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