AUBURN — Livermore Falls attacked through the air. St. Dom’s opted to stay on the ground.

Staying grounded was the way to go, as the Saints dominated possession of the ball and held off the Andies in a 1-0 triumph in the Western Class C boys’ soccer quarterfinals.

Kurt Johnson scored the lone goal 15:46 into the contest. Then the Saints (15-0) put on a passing clinic to frustrate the Andies (7-6-2) with scant opportunities to prevent the 10th shutout St. Dom’s has pitched this season. 

“We possessed the ball 95 percent of the game,” St. Dom’s coach Matt Erickson said, whose team outshot the Andies, 22-3. “We were in a habit of trying to get it wide always, and I think their weakness might have been in the midfield. So after the half break, I told my boys to play more in the central part of the midfield, particularly with things going through (Saints senior midfielder) Garrett Darnell, and that helped us quite a bit.”

St. Dom’s will next meet the winner of the Mt. Abram/Wiscasset quarterfinal, which was rescheduled to Thursday.

Both teams set a physical tone early that carried throughout the contest. The Saints kept their composure and kept the ball at their feet, while Livermore Falls tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to go over the top to senior striker Khyle Whittemore, which the Saints felt played right into their hands.

“Essentially, with just one striker up trying to play the ball over the top, we haven’t given up a goal that way,” Erickson said. “You play the ball over the top, 80 percent of the time the other team is going to win the ball.”

“Coming into this game, we knew it was going to be tough,” Livermore Falls coach Bill Acritelli said. “The St. Dom’s coach does a fantastic job with this group. They’re a very possession-oriented team. They’re very crafty. They really, really open the field up. They really spread it out, so we knew we had to mark up everybody. We switched formation with these kids for the last three days and they worked well with it. We couldn’t be more happy with them.”

Johnson took a pass from Jack Erickson, kept an Andies’ defender on his outside shoulder, spun and fired a low line drive to the far right corner and past a diving Willie Brown to give the Saints the only goal they needed.

“I saw Jack had the ball and I thought I’d make one of those diagonal runs and Jack made perfect service right to me,” Johnson said. “I knew (the defender was right there), so I tried to get my body and push him off the ball a little bit so I had an angle to kick the ball in.” 

“He covered far post, which he’s supposed to do,” Erickson said. “The ball played through, and because Kurt was in the right position, he was able to finish it. Positioning was key on that.” 

Brown (12 saves) made a couple of spectacular saves at around the 23-minute mark of the second half to keep the Andies in the game — tipping a high Shayne Curtis shot just over the crossbar on the first. Erickson later had a try bounce off the crossbar. 

“He’s a super-athletic kid,” Matt Erickson said of Brown. “I haven’t seen him play, but the scouting report was he would come off his line and take the ball out of the air. So in (Tuesday’s) practice, we worked on serving the ball from the flanks a little further off the line to what I call ‘no man’s land,’ where the keeper is kind of stuck with indecision as to whether to come out or hold his line. Once we started, doing that, particularly on the corners, we started having some additional opportunities.”