The St. Charles Cardinals won the second district championship in school history with a 4-2 win over defending state champion Olentangy Liberty Saturday afternoon in Columbus.

The Columbus district final of the Ohio hockey championship brackets was a matchup of the top 2 seeds. The Olentangy Liberty Patriots came into this game as the #1 seed with a 24-11-0 record and faced the #2 seed St. Charles Cardinals at 23-11-3 entering Saturday’s district final. In the MyHockeyRankings.com OHSAA final rankings the Patriots and Cardinals were #5 and #9, respectively.

These teams met each other twice during CHC regular season action, splitting the games. This district matchup had St. Charles advancing with a 4-2 victory.

The first period was fast paced action by two teams that knew each other well. The only tally in the first was off the stick of Sean Moore for St. Charles with an assist by Luke Myers.

The second period became a more physical contest with several penalties and penalty kills. However, neither team found the back of the net in this period after several outstanding saves by the starting goalies, the Cardinals’ Dylan Fansler and the Patriots’ Caleb Ross.

Early in the third, Liberty appeared to score but the goalpost was dislodged prior to the puck going in to negate the goal. Shortly after, Nicholas Scharfenberger had a breakaway that he converted to give St. Charles a 2-0 lead. 

John Vincent III made it 3-0 from the slot off a nice pass from Danny Roncone. This led to Liberty bringing in Thomas Morgan in net.

Andrew Leonard brought his lunchbox and went to work in front of the goal. He battled to knock in a rebound of Brannon Spencer’s shot. Only a minute later, Liberty got their second goal from Jake Bacchus.

Needing a goal to tie it up, Liberty pulled their goalie with about two minutes remaining in regulation. The extra skater allowed extra pressure to be placed on Fansler but he held up to it. With under a minute left Roncone got an empty net goal to secure the 4-2 final score.

St. Charles Coach Danny Greiner stated the keys to this game were “Our effort, our team game. We talked all year about playing our style of hockey…aggressive on the forecheck, solid in our d-zone. I think today was a testament to us getting back to our basics and back to our game.

This game sets up a matchup with University School, the winner of the Kent district, in the state semi-final. They will meet on Friday March 8 at 4 p.m. at Nationwide Arena.

These two teams met earlier this season with University School getting the 3-1 victory. Both teams were missing players to injury in the earlier matchup. Hopefully both teams will be at full strength. 

--- Earl Hosack for Ohio Hockey Digest