BECKLEY - Catholic Catholic's Taylor Farris and his teammates have endured quite a bit of ribbing in the past year from the Fighting Irish girls team.

"Last year they rubbed it in our faces,'' said Farris of the good-natured teasing after the Catholic girls captured the school's first soccer state championship last season.

The Irish boys won't be the butt of any more jokes after getting past Weir 4-2 in the Class AA-A boys championship game Saturday afternoon at Carter Field at the YMCA Youth Sports Complex. Catholic downed Weir 3-0 to claim another AA-A girls title Saturday morning.

"We were warming up [during the girls game] and we heard them announce Charleston Catholic won and Seth [Ritchie] said, 'Oh great, now we gotta win,' '' said Catholic's Tommy Trupo.

Catholic's road to its inaugural boys championship had a few hairpin curves.

The Irish trailed 2-1 at halftime, including a goal in which they inadvertently knocked the ball into their own net, and visions of last year's slipup in the semifinals started dancing in their heads. Last season, Pocahontas County scored the winning goal late in the second half as Catholic was late in setting its defense.

"We just tried to compose ourselves,'' said Ritchie of Saturday's halftime. "After [Weir] scored we just tried to make sure we were a team again and make sure we worked it around how we play it on the outside like we did the whole season.''

"We've been in this situation before,'' added Trupo. "When [Weir] scored the first two goals, especially the last one, we all huddled and we said, 'We know we can win this game. We have 40 minutes left to play. Let's go out there and play our hardest.' And it just showed. We all wanted it in the second half.''

Ritchie put an end to those flashbacks when he scored the equalizer off a Farris assist, knotting the game at 2-all less than two minutes into the second half.

Trupo's goal off Farris' third assist handed the Irish the lead for good at 3-2 with 25:07 left in the game. Alex Higgins added a goal for good measure off a pass from Ritchie with 19:50 to go. Catholic goalie Tanner James and the rest of the defense held No. 2 Weir (15-3-2), which was playing in its first title game, in check in the second half.

BECKLEY - Catholic Catholic's Taylor Farris and his teammates have endured quite a bit of ribbing in the past year from the Fighting Irish girls team.

"Last year they rubbed it in our faces,'' said Farris of the good-natured teasing after the Catholic girls captured the school's first soccer state championship last season.

The Irish boys won't be the butt of any more jokes after getting past Weir 4-2 in the Class AA-A boys championship game Saturday afternoon at Carter Field at the YMCA Youth Sports Complex. Catholic downed Weir 3-0 to claim another AA-A girls title Saturday morning.

"We were warming up [during the girls game] and we heard them announce Charleston Catholic won and Seth [Ritchie] said, 'Oh great, now we gotta win,' '' said Catholic's Tommy Trupo.

Catholic's road to its inaugural boys championship had a few hairpin curves.

The Irish trailed 2-1 at halftime, including a goal in which they inadvertently knocked the ball into their own net, and visions of last year's slipup in the semifinals started dancing in their heads. Last season, Pocahontas County scored the winning goal late in the second half as Catholic was late in setting its defense.

"We just tried to compose ourselves,'' said Ritchie of Saturday's halftime. "After [Weir] scored we just tried to make sure we were a team again and make sure we worked it around how we play it on the outside like we did the whole season.''

"We've been in this situation before,'' added Trupo. "When [Weir] scored the first two goals, especially the last one, we all huddled and we said, 'We know we can win this game. We have 40 minutes left to play. Let's go out there and play our hardest.' And it just showed. We all wanted it in the second half.''

Ritchie put an end to those flashbacks when he scored the equalizer off a Farris assist, knotting the game at 2-all less than two minutes into the second half.

Trupo's goal off Farris' third assist handed the Irish the lead for good at 3-2 with 25:07 left in the game. Alex Higgins added a goal for good measure off a pass from Ritchie with 19:50 to go. Catholic goalie Tanner James and the rest of the defense held No. 2 Weir (15-3-2), which was playing in its first title game, in check in the second half.

"You could tell we were flustered,'' said second-year Catholic coach Keith Hutcheson. "Half of what we did was trying to get our kids to stay with their mark and trust their players.

"We did a better job of marking the whole team instead of one player in the second half. We played possession, moving the ball outside [and] controlling an area. I think that when we play that way it's a calming thing for our kids, too. I think we began to settle down and take control of the game.''

Stephen Felton's goal off a Cody Morgan assist handed Weir the momentum and a 2-1 lead at intermission, but that was tempered when Felton injured his knee in celebration and was shelved for the rest of the game. Felton, the squad's top distributor, also saw his playing time cut in Friday's semifinal victory because of the flu.

"We had the lead for a little bit then injuries kind of threw us out of our game plan,'' said Weir coach Joe Pepe, whose team lost in the semifinals last year. "It's just one of those things.

"I'm proud of these kids. We'll be down again next year. We've got a good group of kids coming back. We've got some leadership that's leaving us, but left a legacy to follow.''

Catholic (22-1-1), which finished the regular season No. 1 in the final state coaches association rankings, was appearing in only its second boys state final in school history.

"The whole season we worked every day,'' Trupo said. "Coach has been pushing us and pushing us starting with 6 o'clock mornings two weeks before school started.

"As a team we all knew what our final goal was and especially [assistant] Coach [Greg] Kozera. He's been here a while and he's been looking for this his whole life and we finally got it, and to send these seniors out with a championship feels great.''

Reach Tommy R. Atkinson at tatkin...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-4811.