Lake Central beats, ties pair of top-10 teams

Updated: September 24, 2011 9:08PM

ZIONSVILLE — Defending state champion Lake Central showed on Saturday that it’s a team capable of making another deep postseason run.

At the Zionsville Classic, the fourth-ranked Indians defeated No. 6 Brownsburg, 1-0; while playing No. 9 Penn to a 1-1 tie earlier in the day.

“We wanted to see some good competition and see how we match up,” Lake Central’s Josh Crague said.

Lake Central’s win against Brownsburg didn’t come without an interesting finish, as two yellow cards were given to the Indians within the last minute, causing a time stoppage and dead-ball kick each time.

Indians’ goalie Joey Majchrowicz punched away two scoring opportunities by Brownsburg, the last one coming with 1.9 seconds remaining off a corner kick.

“You had two teams in the top-10 fighting out a tight match,” said Lake Central coach Jereme Rainwater.

Lake Central controlled the first half of its match against Brownsburg and had several scoring opportunities just miss, including two headers from Adam Van Milligan, as each one was cleared by a defender.

Crague scored the match’s only goal with 26 minutes remaining in the first half.

“Ethan Donovan played an excellent through ball and I just chipped it right over the goalie,” Crague said.

In the second half, though, Brownsburg controlled the tempo and had several scoring opportunities.

“(Brownsburg) was able to impose how they wanted to play in the second half,” Rainwater said. “You can attribute that a little to Brownsburg gets to go home between games and rest.

“We’re up at 6:30 in the morning, and earlier than that for some of them, and I thought we lost our legs a little in the second half. But I was very proud of the first half and how they played.”

Lake Central and Penn will play again next week, as both teams used Saturday’s 1-1 tie to play different lineups.

“We were able to play some other kids to see what they can give us in a long stretch run through the playoffs hopefully,” Rainwater said. “We had a good opportunity to do some evaluations and then in the second game we came out to compete and I thought we did a fantastic job.”

Troy Cherven scored Lake Central’s goal against Penn on an assist from Crague.

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