Warren Central lost a man. Then it lost its cool. Then it lost a game, the Region 4-6A championship, and a home playoff game all in one fell swoop.

Miles Sims scored two goals, and Clinton scored three times as it beat Warren Central 4-1 on Tuesday to clinch the Region 4-6A title.

It was an ugly loss for Warren Central (7-4-2, 1-1 Region 4-6A), not just on the scoreboard but in tone. Senior defender Zane Flaharty received a hard red card late in the first half for disputing a call, forcing the Vikings to play with 10 men for the rest of the game. Later on, a physical game started to spiral out of control as the teams combined for a half-dozen yellow cards and twice as many hard fouls.
Warren Central received four yellow cards and Clinton two.

“It’s something we’ve been working on all year — controlling what we can control, and don’t worry about the referee control. It escapes them and we’ve got some that have tempers,” Warren Central coach Greg Head said. “The team loses composure, and it’s some of my older guys and those are leaders that people look up to.”

The loss of Flaharty was a particularly big blow, Head added. As one of the team’s top defenders he was helping to keep Clinton (7-10-2, 2-0) in check. The Vikings stayed in it for a while after he was ejected, but eventually wore down physically and couldn’t overcome the additional lineup changes required to cover for his absence.

“I love Zane to death, and I hope he learns from his mistake,” Head said. “He’s one of the leaders of the defense and we have a young defense when he’s not out there. We had to pull our midfielders back to defense because our other two defenders are real young and inexperienced, so it kills the team when you bring out a leader like that.”

Clinton’s Corey Lewis took advantage of a defensive lapse by Warren Central to score the game’s first goal. After the Vikings failed to fully clear a goal kick and turned it over in their own end, Lewis zipped up the middle of the field and scored from 20 yards out in the 13th minute.

Josh Griffin got the Vikings on the board in the 43rd minute with a goal from the left side, but Clinton had most of the chances after that. Sims twice hit the crossbar before Luke Bryant was tackled in the box in the 61st minute. Sims converted the ensuing penalty kick to give the Arrows a 2-1 lead.

The floodgates opened after that as the Vikings, already short-handed, had to press even more for the tying goal. Bryant played a deep ball from near midfield that Sims neatly flicked off the side of his foot as he ran across the box, beating keeper Chase Graham for a 3-1 lead with 13 minutes left in the match.

Tucker Barefoot added the final goal for the Arrows in the 71st minute. He celebrated by pointing at Graham as he ran toward the sideline, then sliding to his knees around the 15-yard line in an exaggerated display.

Warren Central received two of its cards in the final 20 minutes and Head pulled another player, senior midfielder Karsten Keyes, from the game after Keyes followed up a foul with some unkind words toward a Clinton player.

The Vikings weren’t alone in their antics. One Clinton player received a yellow card for intentionally moving the ball before the Vikings could execute a free kick, and the Arrows also were called for their share of hard fouls. It was Warren Central, however, that wound up on the wrong end of a very heated game.

“We played hard, even when we got down a man. We just can’t lose our temper and that’s been something we’ve been pushing all year. Even when we got a man down we were still in it. They just lost focus in there. They quit playing soccer and started booming the ball. Once you start doing that, you lose all composure. We weren’t doing the things we were doing to get the ball up the field.”