By RICK PETERSON
TopSports.news
Washburn Rural boys soccer coach Brian Hensyel knew that visiting Blue Valley West would present a tough challenge in Tuesday night's non-league game and that's exactly what he wanted.
Senior Dylan Willingham scored a pair of goals, giving him seven on the season, in Washburn Rural's 3-2 double-overtime loss to Blue Valley West Tuesday at Rural. [Photo by Rick Peterson/TSN]
And even though the Junior Blues dropped a 3-2 double-overtime heartbreaker at McElroy Field, the veteran coach is counting on the loss to make Rural better as the 2025 season wears on.
"No. 1, we always want to play the best teams we can play,'' Hensyel said. "The only way you're prepared to play people at the end is to play teams like Blue Valley West, we play Blue Valley North later in the year and we take a trip to Iowa and play some good teams. You have to test them and we told our guys before the game, we've won a couple of games and we've been pretty impressive doing it, but we needed to play somebody really good and they're good.
"So from the perspective of the third game of the year, playing a really good team, it's good for us to kind of find out where we were. And what we found out is we can be pretty good and we had a pretty good first half and put in a couple of set piece goals, which is something that we do. I thought we just let off the gas and let off the energy a little bit to start the second half.''
Washburn Rural, now 2-1, jumped out in front 2-0 at halftime on a pair of goals from senior star Dylan Willingham, but Blue Valley West (4-1) battled back with two second-half goals to force overtime and scored the game-winning goal with just 42 seconds remaining in the second OT.
Willingham put Rural up 1-0 when he converted a free kick with 16:10 left in the opening half and added a second goal, his seventh of the season, off an assist from senior Brandon Hamilton with 7:06 remaining in the half.
Blue Valley West needed just 1:10 into the second half to get on the board with a goal from junior Nate Berman and knotted the game at 2-all on a goal from senior Bennington Gifford with 17:37 left in regulation.
Both teams came up empty on scoring chances over the remainder of regulation and through the first overtime and most of the second OT before Blue Valley West avoided a tie with a goal from sophomore Jackson Gagel as time wound down.
Washburn Rural will be on the road Thursday for a non-league game at De Soto.
BLUE VALLEY WEST 3, WASHBURN RURAL 2 (2 OT)
Blue Valley West (4-1) 0 2 1 -- 3
Washburn Rural (2-1) 2 0 0 -- 2
Blue Valley West -- Goals: Nate Berman, Bennington Gifford, Jackson Gagel.
Washburn Rural -- Goals: Dylan Willingham 2. Assist: Brandon Hamilton.
