By RYAN ARENA
L’Observateur

LAPLACE — St. Charles Catholic boys soccer coach Sean LeBlanc offered a wry smile after his team’s 2-1 home loss to a red-hot University Lab squad Thursday night.

The Comets showed great improvement from their 4-0 loss to the Cubs in the first meeting between the teams this season — but a win over a top five-ranked team, and a potential district championship share, would have been all the sweeter.

“That’s a talented, talented team,” said LeBlanc of University. “They’re more talented than we are. We’re young and not quite used to the spotlight yet.”

It was University’s 14th consecutive victory.

Thomas Kobetz scored both University Lab goals, each coming in the first half.

The eventual game-winner came with 16:30 left to play in the first half. Kobetz showed off his offensive skills, maneuvering past his defender and firing a shot just over the leap of SCC goalkeeper Matt Templet.

“We create a lot of good opportunities and spacing with our passing,” said University coach Chris Mitchell. “That allows us to generate a lot of one on one matchups on the outside, and we’ve got some talented guys who can take advantage of those.”

University took a 1-0 lead on Kobetz’s first goal, scored just five minutes into the game.

The Comets (7-3-3, 3-2) tied things up with 29 minutes left, however, on a long Jackson Young kick. The ball bounced high off the ground in front of U-High goalkeeper Matthew Johnson and caromed over his head and into the net.

It was the first goal allowed by University in the past 13 games.

“I’ll take that,” said LeBlanc. “We had a couple opportunities beyond that, a couple of balls that went our way, but we didn’t finish the limited chances we had.”

Said Mitchell, “That was an unfortunate mistake, but it didn’t faze us.”

In the final 10 minutes of the first half, the Comet defense stopped U-High from putting things away on potential scoring chances late in the half, buoyed by some strong play from Templet in the goal.

“That’s just Templet doing what he’s done all year long for us,” said LeBlanc.

In the second half, University controlled the action most of the way. The Comets dug in defensively to keep hope alive, but University kept the action primarily in SCC territory.

“We’ve been working on playing a possession game and limiting other teams’ opportunities to create chances. Tonight we did a great job of that. Our goalkeeper never had to touch the ball (in the second half).”

For St. Charles, two district matchups remain. The first comes today as SCC travels to Dunham. Then, on Monday, the Comets will host rival Riverside in the regular season finale.