Tuttle comes up clutch for Eagles soccer in 1-0 win over Tigers

by Michael Smith


With a narrow lead, Brett Lewis and his Grain Valley boys soccer team needed someone to come up clutch.

The Eagles were clinging to a 1-0 lead late in a first-round matchup with Sedalia Smith-Cotton in the Class 4 District tournament. The Tigers were getting multiple golden opportunities to score.

Senior goalkeeper Alex Tuttle stepped up.

He made three critical stops in the final 12 minutes of the game as Grain Valley hung on to a 1-0-win Tuesday at the Blue Springs South soccer field.

“(Tuttle) makes all the saves he should make and also made a couple of big saves,” Lewis said. “He’s come up big for us. When we were going against the wind in the second half, I knew he was going to have make a couple of saves. He was big in those moments.”

The Eagles (14-7) advance and will play Columbia Rock Bridge at 6 p.m. Thursday at Blue Springs South.

Smith-Cotton senior Juan Matacuaubaldo ripped a 20-foot toward the Grain Valley goal in the 68th minute, but Tuttle dove and stopped the shot at the middle of the goal. About 5 minutes later, Tuttle made a leaping grab on a shot from Elias Joshua Salmeron, which came from 25 yards out, to preserve the shutout.

Then in the 74th minute, the senior came out to challenge a 1-on-1 breakaway against Kaydon Motsinger. He made a sliding tackle to stop Motsinger’s progress and defender Alex Fuhrman cleared the ball for yet another critical stop.

“I think it was definitely the best game of my season,” Tuttle said. “I couldn’t have done that if Cooper didn’t score that goal and our guys in the back played good defense. I can’t do it without the rest of the team.

I wasn’t thinking (on the challenge of Motsinger’s breakaway). I was blank. It was all or nothing. You just have to commit.”

Tuttle and the Eagles back line was challenge by a different style of play the Tigers deployed Tuesday, but Lewis said his team handled it well.

“Smith-Cotton was probably the most direct team we’ve played well,” Lewis said.

“They get it and they smash it and they run and run and run. Defending against a different style was different from our defense.”

Grain Valley scored the only goal of the game with 7 seconds left in the first half. Junior defender Riley Spencer rushed to send a quick corner kick deep inside Sedalia’s penalty box. Sophomore defender Cooper Bousselot knocked in a header off the corner for the game winner.

“I told Riley, we had 25 seconds left,” Bousselot said. “There was no need to rush. I was sitting near the back post and no one was guarding me. He just left it and it fell right to me and I just put it in the back of the net.”

The goal helped Bousselot get redemption after missing a penalty kick early in the contest.

“Right when we got the corner I was telling Riley (Spencer) to sprint up,” Lewis said. “And we loaded the box. We maybe left one guy back at the 25 (yard line). The rest were in the box. Luckily, they didn’t do a good job marking us near the back post and Bousselot was there to redirect it into the goal. He redeemed himself for missing the PK earlier in the game. We really should have been up by one at that point.”

Grain Valley has now more than doubled their win total from the 2023 season in which it finished 5-14.

​“It’s a reflection on how our seniors work and how coachable they are,” Lewis said. “I feel like we had a lot of talent last year, we just couldn’t finish games. This year, the boys have been really coachable, and the seniors have been great leaders. They have been able to take what we do in practice and execute it well in a game. There are lots of guys who ask what they can do to get better.”

Grain Valley senior goalkeeper Alex Tuttle, left, made three key saves in the final 12 minutes while sophomore Cooper Bousselot made the game winning goal in Grain Valley's 1-0 win over Sedalia Smith-Cotton in the first round of the Class 4 District 7 Tournament Tuesday at Blue Springs South High School. Photo credit: Michael Smith