The Oakville Senior High School boys’ soccer squad won its battle with the cold rain, heavy wind and the Vianney Griffins last week as the Tigers won their first Class 3 District 7 championship since 2005.

After knocking off the Griffins 3-2 in the Nov. 3 contest, the 20-7 Tigers advanced to sectional play. The Tigers were set to host 22-5 Rockwood Summit, which has won 11 straight games, on Tuesday — after the Call went to press.

Oakville head coach Dave Robben told the Call that he was proud of the team effort his players gave in the victory.

“This is a total team effort. That’s the way we play,” he said. “Actually, our defense has been keeping us in games all season and tonight it was the forwards, our offense, that gave us those three goals and the defense, they came through again. They made it interesting.

“It was a great team victory. I’m proud of the boys and the way they played. They all stepped up and played for one another,” Robben added.

The Tigers scored all of their points in the first half with goals from Mike Munsell, Jared Swierk and Alex Dieckmann. Vianney started to rally in the second, but the Tigers’ defense held tight.

Robben stressed the importance of getting the early lead in the contest and said the weather also was a big factor.

“It was a game obviously of two halves,” he said. “We came out on fire and scored those three goals, and had all that pressure and had them. They were discombobulated.

“Part of it had to do with the weather here. This wind and this mist, we had that advantage in the first half. And in the second half, when it started off, the wind had died down and the mist had died down and then all of sudden it started picking up again. We kind of got slipping and sliding a little bit. Well, they put the first goal in and it was 3-1.”

The second goal was uncharacteristic, Robben noted.

“… It went in because the ball was wet and the gloves were wet …,” he said. “We really had to tighten it up the last 10 minutes. We had some crazy defense back there.”

Dieckmann, who scored the game-winner, decided to gamble on his own intuition and it paid off big for him and his teammates.

“They played it off to the side over there and I’m not really sure how it got up to me, but I think it was a through ball,” he told the Call. “I had a one touch and I was deciding to play it out wide for a cross-in. But I was actually watching a game the other day and a guy hit one out from there and put it right in the corner.

“I was like, hey, I can do that, too. I’ll try it and it ended up going right in the corner for me,” Dieckmann said.