Northwestern pushed for a winning goal in overtime, but Leonardtown held on and eventually prevailed on penalty kicks, 4-2, after 100 minutes of play ended tied at 2 at Loyola University. Noah Phillips lifted the final shot of the shootout into the top left corner and wheeled away in celebration.
Half of Phillips’s teammates rushed toward him, and the others sprinted to goalkeeper Adam Labows, who made two saves in the shootout, as the Raiders claimed their first state title.
“When I hit it, I knew it was going top bins,” Phillips said of his game-winning strike. “A lot of reps put into it. You just got to trust your skills, and when I saw Adam make that save, I knew I had to do it for him and do it for everybody.”
Lincoln Bauer stepped up to the penalty spot in the 25th minute and dispatched his strike into the bottom left corner to give Leonardtown (18-1-1) a first-half lead, just as he did early in the Raiders’ semifinal victory against Whitman and later in the penalty shootout. Devin Ledman finished off a well-worked Raiders counterattack to double the advantage in the 63rd minute.
Northwestern’s late flurry of goals erased Leonardtown’s lead, but first-year coach Luke Kokolios believed the Raiders’ late-season tests prepared them to triumph in close contests. Leonardtown won each of its four playoff games by a goal and won its semifinal in overtime.
“All we had to do was dig deep. We just had to survive for 20 minutes,” Ledman said. “I knew we were winning on penalty kicks, so when overtime was over, we just got over the hard part.”
Leonardtown’s grit was apparent in overtime as it kept a dynamic Northwestern (13-1-1) attack at bay despite the Wildcats’ player advantage. The Raiders converted all four of their spot kicks in the shootout, and Labows’s pair of diving saves helped Leonardtown down an undefeated Northwestern team.
“As a player, we never got it. I always thought we were right on the cusp of getting it, but we didn’t,” said Kokolios, who played at Leonardtown and graduated in 2018. “To be able to coach a group like this, it’s just an incredible feeling.”