Going for the ball are Rochester Adams High School boys soccer player Joey Dillon (right, #4) and Utica Eisenhower player Brent Schmid (#12) during first half action, Thursday, October 29, 2009, in the Division 1 Region 4 soccer game final played at Lake Orion HS in Lake Orion, Mich. (The Oakland Press/Jose Juarez)

LAKE ORION — Cue up Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound” or whatever other tune out there that symbolizes a return home, because the Rochester Adams boys soccer team is headed there.

And no, it doesn’t mean the Highlanders are finished for the season.

On the contrary, Adams is very much alive and will not only get to play in a state semifinal, but will do so on its home field.

Thanks to a 2-0 win over Utica Eisenhower in a Division 1 regional final on Thursday, the Highlanders advanced to a state semifinal that will played at 6 p.m. on Wednesday at Adams against the winner of tonight’s regional final at Troy between Birmingham Brother Rice and Novi.

The Michigan High School Athletic Association last week chose either Adams or Saginaw Heritage to host the semifinal game, depending on the geographical location of the participating teams.

Since it’ll be an all-Oakland County semifinal, there’s no need to go north, so Adams will now enjoy what should be a comfortable and frenzied environment on Wednesday.

“It’s definitely an honor to be able to host that,” Adams head coach Josh Hickey said. “When I found out that might be the case, there definitely was some motivation there.”

The Highlanders (17-3-3) will enter the semifinals on a 17-game unbeaten streak, thanks to senior captain Joey Dillon, who scored both goals of the game in the final 18:06.

Up until then, Adams had to have been wondering if fate wasn’t on its side.

The Highlanders dominated the possession and chances throughout the game and hit the crossbar twice on shots in the first half.

The most thunderous of those clangs off of the crossbar came off the foot of Dillon, who had a point-blank shot in the Eisenhower box.

“I was kicking myself in the foot a little bit,” Dillon said. “But I thought we kept possession and that we would be able to break through. It was a good team effort.”

Dillon’s first goal came on a free kick from about 25 yards out after an Eisenhower foul. Given the hard luck Adams had in the first half, the Highlanders seemed due for a good bounce, and they got one.

Dillon’s shot was deflected slightly by the head of an Eisenhower defender, which caused the ball to knuckle under the crossbar and give Adams a 1-0 lead with 18:06 remaining.

With 13:25 remaining, Dillon provided some insurance when he took a hard shot in the Eisenhower box that went off an Eisenhower defender who was standing just inside the far post and into the goal.

“Just irreplaceable,” Hickey said of Dillon. “He’s starting to get some recognition. I think he’s had an opportunity to show on this platform just what he can do.”

For the game, Adams had a whopping 10 corner kicks and outshot Eisenhower, 18-6.

Adams senior goalie Kevin Soisson did make a couple of critical saves, one of which came toward the end of the first half when he just barely stopped a shot from going across the goal line.

The second one came with three minutes left, as he stopped a shot by an Eisenhower player taken from roughly five feet in front of him.

“It was just a matter of when they were going to go in,” Hickey said. “I had confidence in them and they had confidence.”

Given it hasn’t lost in 17 games and gets to play a state semifinal game at home, the confidence should only increase for Adams going into Wednesday.

“We noticed it,” Dillon said of when the MHSAA posted its semifinal sites last week. “But we tried not to look too far ahead and to just take it one game at a time.”



E-mail Keith Dunlap at keith.dunlap@oakpress.com.