NATCHEZ — Through 110 minutes of play, the Cathedral and St. Patrick soccer teams were so evenly matched it seemed their game would never end.

But the Green Wave’s superiority showed through when the goalkeepers went head-to-head in Cathedral’s 4-1 win in the second round of the MHSAA 1A/2A/3A South State playoffs.

Tied 1-1 after 80 minutes of regulation, two 10-minute overtime periods and two five-minute overtimes, the teams went to five penalty kicks a piece.

Beau Carter for St. Patrick went first, and Cathedral goalie Aaron Sandiford dove to his right for the ball, deflecting it with his glove and sending it flying high over the net.

Then Julian Stubbs stepped up for the Wave, softly kicking the ball to the right side of the net. Irish goalkeeper Daniel Reeder dove for the ball but missed, and it drifted into the corner.

“As soon as their keeper missed the first one, it was over,” said Cathedral coach Rick Simons. “It got them all down, and that’s all it takes for some of these younger kids. Once something goes wrong, they think everything’s going to go wrong. We jumped on the opportunity when we had it.”

Colton Symmes missed his shot for the Irish, sending it over the goal, and Cole Mann put a shot nearly identical to Stubbs’ in almost the same position in the net.

Then Corey Platt missed wide right for St. Patrick, and Harrison Burns came up for the Green Wave.

“Walking up, I knew I had it,” Burns said. “I had my corner picked out, and I knew the keeper wasn’t going to be able to stop it.”

Burns was right. Although his kick was a bit hard than the other two, it landed just outside Reeder’s reach for the Green Wave win.

Burns, on defense for the whole 110 minutes of the game, said it was an incredible feeling to get to score the winning goal.

“It pretty much made my career as a soccer player,” he said. “We knew (Reeder) wasn’t the most agile keeper in the world, and we just placed it where we need to, where we knew we could beat him.”

The game was scoreless through the first half, but Cathedral scored first in regulation.

Cavin Skidmore sent a pass through St. Patrick defenders to Hunter Foster, who placed the shot just to the left of Reeder for the goal at 23:39.

It looked like that would be the only goal of the game, but at 9:45 Symmes lobbed one in from 40 yards out. The ball went over Sandiford’s head and dropped in just behind him.

But Sandiford made up for it with the save on the penalty kick, and he had six saves in the first half.

“He played amazing,” Burns said of his goalie. “He made some great saves in the first half and he came up big at the end. He helped us win that game.”

Burns also said the practices Simons has put the team through all year helped them make it through the overtime periods and the penalty kicks.

He said Simons runs them hard in every practice, and they take kicks nearly every day.

“That’s one thing we focus on is our conditioning,” Simons said. “I’ve told them since I started coaching, if we can’t beat a team we’re definitely going to be in better shape than them. They didn’t stop all the way down to our last goal-to-goal five minutes.”