Lamar School's Davis Thames bumps into a Pillow Academy player as he goes for the ball Thursday during the MAIS 4A District 2 semi-finals.

Head coach Leon Powell told his team to win the game in the first 20 minutes.

The Lamar School Raiders responded by scoring a goal apiece in the first five minutes of each half and withstood a late push by Pillow Academy to take a 2-1 win the the MAIS Class AAAA Division 2 boys soccer state semifinals Thursday evening.

Both goals came courtesy of senior Sam Vaughn, who put one in during the fifth minute of play and scored again in the 52nd minute of play to give his team the edge. The win gives Lamar a berth in the AAAA Division 2 state championship game at Washington School Saturday in a year where the school already has a state title in soccer thanks to the Lady Raiders’ effort this past fall.

“It was really exciting,” Vaughn said of both goals. “I’m so proud of us. Everyone played great. We had a couple of mistakes, but everyone makes mistakes, and we pulled through and played hard.”

Powell said he discussed his team with an on-air commentator from Pillow Academy earlier in the week but made sure to be coy about Vaughn’s abilities.

“Sam is one guy I didn’t tell anyone about, because he’s my special guy, and he came up big tonight,” Powell said. “He was excellent.”

Vaughn’s first goal came on a pass across the middle that pulled the keeper out of the goal, giving him an easy shot for the 1-0 lead.

“I forget who was on the right — I think it was Will (Roberts) or Parker (Neal) — and they made a good play on the keeper,” Vaughn said. “They crossed it in, and I just slipped through two defenders.”

The goal was huge, Powell explained, because it put Pillow Academy on its heels early.

“Not many people score in the first 15 to 20 minutes of the game, and for us to get it, it puts us up,” Powell said. ‘If they had come onto our home turf (and done that), we’d have gone down, and it would have been a difficult hill to climb up. It was really good to get that quick goal.

“I told them, ‘Let’s win it in the first 20 minutes,’ and they went out and scored in the first five minutes.”

The score remained 1-0 at the break, and two minutes into the second half, Vaughn scored again off a throw-in when he headed the ball into the net.

Following Lamar’s second goal, Pillow Academy began to sub in more offense and made several pushes, but keeper Alex Honeycutt had a couple of excellent saves to keep Lamar ahead. It wasn’t until the 74th minute that Pillow Academy finally got on the board when freshman Sunjay Chawla found the net on a penalty kick.

“He showed up tonight and saved us two good shots,” Powell said of his keeper. “He was just dominant. He was an excellent player tonight.”

Pillow Academy was unable to score again in the final six minutes of play, and Lamar is now looking forward to a rematch with Washington School, which the Raiders lost to earlier this season 2-1.

“It’s going to be a good game,” Powell said. “It’ll be how a final is supposed to be: a showdown.”

Said Vaughn, “They’re pretty good. They’re about on the same level as the team we just played, but they have a couple of athletes — big tough athletes who played football. That will be the tough part of it.”

Vaughn credited his fellow seniors’ leadership for the Raiders getting this far, as well as Powell, who is in his first year coaching at the school.

“He’s really knowledgeable, and he’s tough,” Vaughn said. “It kind of (stinks) running at every practice — he makes us run a lot — but he knows what he’s doing. he pushes us hard and makes us better.”