Welsh powers Broadneck past No. 5 Severna Park

Perhaps the best way to sum up Broadneck High’s 2-1 boys soccer victory Thursday night against Severna Park would be a fast start followed by a nail-biting finish.

Thanks to a first-half brace by junior midfielder Harlan Welsh, the host and sixth-ranked Bruins opened up a 2-0 halftime advantage, but to secure the win in this heated Anne Arundel County rivalry, they had to endure a frantic finish by the No. 5 Falcons, who saw an equalizing goal in the final seconds negated by a foul.

That final sequence of events concluded with Severna Park forward Jeffrey Chukwu making contact with Broadneck goalkeeper Matt Tettemer as Tettemer looked to secure a ball in the air. The contact forced Tettemer to the ground without the ball, leading to a goal for the Falcons, but the head official deemed the contact a foul, and the final seconds of the match ran out to secure the Bruins’ victory.

“We were definitely holding on toward the end,” said Broadneck coach Sean Tettemer, whose team improved to 7-1 overall and 6-0 in Anne Arundel play. “No doubt about it. Just trying to hold on and see the game out. You can’t keep them down for long. They can attack you in so many different ways. I thought we did well. I felt we held up strong, but they, of course, had some chances.”

Speaking of offensive opportunities, Welsh struck twice on volleys during set pieces for the two-goal advantage. The first goal came roughly two minutes into the match as he blasted in a half volley shot into the left corner in a long throw-in the Falcons’ defense did not effectively clear. Ben Durkin was on the other end of that long throw-in as he tossed the ball on a line from the visitor sideline.

“Everybody says we work on (set pieces) all the time because we score on set pieces all the time, but we work on them for about 15 minutes before every game,” Coach Tettemer said. “We try to get better possession. We try to be a better technical team and have better tactics, but it’s something we can always rely on, and tonight, it was huge.”

Welsh, near the back post, struck again in the final minute of the opening half, volleying in a beautiful corner kick from TJ Remson.

“I just got on the end of it,” said Welsh of his goals. “I was just in the right place at the right time. We played well. They were a good team. We got those goals. I think they could have easily got goals just as we could have. They had a lot of energy going into the last 10 minutes. They know they need to get goals, and we just had to prevent them.”

The Falcons (7-1, 4-1 Anne Arundel) had a few scoring chances of their own in the first half, but a couple of saves by Tettemer kept the score 2-0 at intermission. Tettemer also saved an ill-timed headed pass from his teammate at the top of the penalty area, while he also cleared away two balls in the span of a few seconds outside of the box following a miscommunication on a long through ball by Severna Park.

He initially made a slide tackle on an open attacker and then outworked two Falcons for the ball before being fouled to end the threat.

The Bruins survived a near miss from Ben Groseclose in transition late in the second half before the Falcons cut the deficit in half on a finish by Chukwu off a well-placed header by Andrew Campbell. Tettemer came up to field the header, but the ball eluded him, and Chukwu was able to get behind him for the tap-in with just under 11 minutes remaining in the match.

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