Greene County was a 2-1 overtime winner at Boone on Tuesday evening to open the 2022 high school boys’ soccer season. The game winner came from sophomore Nathan Behne on a free kick with only 36 seconds left in the 10 minute extra session. He talked with Raccoon Valley Radio about what the setup was as he prepared the kick. “I’m trying to put some curve on it from right to left to get it around the wall and I just had to focus on keeping it down. The ground was pretty bumpy and their keeper had saved everything up high, so I had to keep it low.” He did just that and the celebration was on!

Behne had the assist on the first goal of the night with 14:03 remaining in the first half. The goal was scored by junior Jose Velazco, who talked about the play. “I knew we could burn them with speed as soon as I noticed their defense wasn’t as fast or quick, so as soon as I saw that Behne had the ball, I called for it and I knew he was going to put it on target, which he did. I put it in the left corner.”

Greene County is a Class 1A program, the smallest of Iowa’s three classes of soccer, while Boone is in 2A. The Toreadors showed much improvement from their 2-14 campaign of a season ago. The Rams were 14-7 in 2021 and Coach Behne’s teams have qualified for the last two State Tournaments in 2019 and ’21. There was no season in 2020 due to COVID-19.