Put it in the record book.

For the first time ever in 24 years, the Jim Thorpe boys soccer team has captured a Schuylkill League championship.

The Olympians defeated Pine Grove, 4-2, Thursday night at Lehighton Stadium to claim the title.

“The kids worked so hard for this,” said head coach Mike Dudak, who has coached many of his players since they were eight years old. “They bought into our system. They played with chemistry and heart all season long.”

The game didn’t exactly begin as planned for the Olympians. Five minutes into the contest, Pine Grove was awarded a penalty kick. Mitchell Lesh, the Cardinals leading scorer during the regular season, promptly hit the back of the net to give his team a 1-0 early lead.

But that lead was short lived. Less than 30 seconds later, Thorpe’s Alex Putt took a pass from Leandro Ramirez and boomed a 30-yard kick into the top right corner of the goal to knot the score.

After Putt’s goal, the Olympians continued to pressure Pine Grove’s defense. Thorpe threatened to score for the next two minutes before the action resembled a Ping-Pong game, with the ball bouncing from one team to another between the 20-yard lines.

Pine Grove then seized field position for a brief time. Alex Balmer’s shot sailed wide right of Jim Thorpe goalkeeper Jacob Geiser, but on the ensuing Olympian rush, a collision occurred in front of the Cardinals’ net and the ball bounced off Thor Huth’s knee and over the goal line to give top-seeded Thorpe a one-score lead at the intermission.

“We match up very well with them,” said Dudak, referring to Thorpe’s win and tie in two previous games this season. “They come at us in spurts, but they don’t sustain the pressure the whole game.”

A “spurt” is exactly what happened as action began in the final 40 minutes. Pine Grove’s Bryce Weber got loose on the left side, but missed his angle shot on goal. The Cardinals then let Jack Morris streak ahead of their defenders. He took a beautiful heel kick pass right onto his foot from Huth and buried his shot past Lengle for a 3-1 Jim Thorpe lead.

Soccer can be, and often is, a contact sport. After Lengle was accidentally kicked in the face on an Olympian rush to the net, he made a tough save on a bicycle kick by Marc Waslesyn.

After that, it was time for Thorpe’s freshman goalie to “save” the game. At the 27-minute mark, Geiser stopped two header shots at the goal mouth. Minutes later, he leaped and tipped the ball that would bounce off the crossbar on a shot from 10 yards out. Geiser then slid out to his left to cut off the angle on a shot by Sebastian Kull. Later, he shut the door on Lesh near the goalmouth, and soon after kick-saved a bullet by Cody Griffiths.

“Jacob has been a rock star all year and with his travel team experience, this moment was not too big for him,” said Dudak.

Trailing 3-1 with 10 minutes left, the unthinkable happened to Pine Grove when one of their own defenders tried to clear the ball and instead kicked it into his own goal.

The Cardinals’ Ethan Hannevig finished the game’s scoring with 4:27 to play, but this night and this game belonged to the Olympians.

When asked if he had set winning the league championship as a goal for his team, Jim Thorpe’s third-year coach replied with a tear in his eye.

“At the very beginning I gave the kids a welcome packet, and in the packet on the first page were words that said, ‘Jim Thorpe - 2019 Schuylkill League Champions.’ I told them to put it on their refrigerators, or wherever they would see it everyday.”

Seeing is believing, and believing made the dream come: The Jim Thorpe Olympians are the 2019 Schuylkill League champions.

HEEDING COACH’S ADVICE ... After scoring just one goal on 27 shots in the semifinal win over Tri-Valley, Dudak instructed his team to reduce their 30-yard kicks at the net. That was evident in that many of their 14 shots against Pine Grove were inside the 15-yard line.

UP NEXT ... By winning the league title, Thorpe is now the top seed in next week’s D-11 Class 2A playoffs and receives a first-round bye. Pine Grove is the second seed.