Sakach Making Impact As Freshman Goalie At Ohio Northern, Heading To NCAA D-III Tournament This Weekend

By Rick Cassano

ADA – A quick glance at her phone gave Blake Sakach the news she wasn’t expecting.

The 2026 Badin High School graduate knew she was having a strong season with the Ohio Northern University women’s soccer team. She doesn’t lack confidence. She knows she can be good.

Still, a couple major awards from the Ohio Athletic Conference startled the freshman goalkeeper a bit.

“I found out in class one day,” Sakach said of being named to the OAC first team while earning Goalkeeper of the Year and Co-Freshman of the Year honors. “I got the social media post and I was like, ‘Holy crap.’ I never thought that I would get these awards, especially coming in as a freshman. I looked on Instagram and I saw my name tagged in a bunch of stuff and I was like, ‘OK, wow.’ My name was all over ONU for a day or two. It was great.”

What Sakach has proven is that she can be a high-level athlete at the NCAA Division III level, where Ohio Northern has regularly been a formidable player through the years.

Sakach and the Polar Bears are 11-5-3 and won the OAC tournament championship last weekend, earning the ninth NCAA tournament berth in program history.

ONU will head to Erie, Pa., to face host Penn State-Behrend (17-0-3) at 11 a.m. on Saturday. New York University (7-3-5) and Middlebury (9-4-4) will square off at 1:30 p.m., and the winners will play at 1 p.m. on Sunday in Erie.

“I’m excited,” Sakach said. “It’s an honor to play in the NCAA tournament. Not everyone gets to do that.”

Sakach has been starting in goal for the Polar Bears most of the season, though she saw no action in her first collegiate contest. She started Game 2 and has been the primary keeper ever since.

“It took her a little bit to get her feet wet as a freshman getting thrown into it, but she’s been all-reliable,” fourth-year ONU coach Ben Tierney said. “She’s been everything we knew she was going to be. That’s a competitor, a worker, a fantastic teammate, a great person.

“She’s kind of excelled beyond what we thought she was going to do as a freshman. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her rattled.”

Sakach leads the OAC in goals allowed per game (0.62), save percentage (.855) and shutouts (8). She’s the first Polar Bear to be named Goalkeeper of the Year since Becky Moss in 2022.

Aggressiveness has always been Sakach’s calling card. She said that hasn’t changed in college.

“On corners or 50-50s, you have to go get the ball,” Sakach said. “My mentality is to get the ball and knock down whoever’s in your way. Sometimes you just have to run through the person.”

Badin coach Chris Slusher thought Sakach could shine at Ohio Northern. Her success has confirmed that feeling.

“Blake’s very athletic, very gifted and has the perfect mentality for a goalkeeper and a teammate,” Slusher said. “Her smile is deceiving. She smiles a lot, but she’s one tough cookie. She’s a big-moment player. The kids she plays with absolutely love her.

“She’s a very technical goalkeeper. She understands the game and has great footwork. The one thing that I really liked about her is if she needed to fix something in a game or I needed to give her direction, she would just point and say, ‘I got you, Chris,’ and it wouldn’t happen again. She would fix it right away.”

ONU will have a workout Friday morning before leaving for Erie. The Polars made previous NCAA appearances in 2009, 2011, 2012, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2024, and they’ve won at least one game in their last seven NCAA trips.

Sakach sat on a bench inside Ohio Northern’s Kerscher Stadium on Tuesday afternoon and talked about the season, her expectations and how she ended up in Hardin County in the first place.

“I didn’t really know what to expect,” said Sakach, who’s an exercise physiology major and wants to become an occupational therapist working with children in hospitals. “College soccer is a whole different game, and it’s hard coming somewhere different when you have to make new friends and new teammates.”

Sakach said Hanover (Ind.) and Tiffin were among the places she considered before opting to attend ONU, which is located about 16 miles east of Lima. She was a Badin junior when she reached out to the Polar Bear coaches, who ended up seeing her play multiple soccer and basketball games.

“I really liked the campus,” Sakach said. “I liked all the girls and coaches when I met them. I like having academics first, and this is a really good academic school.

“I really like the teacher-to-student ratio and just having small-setting classrooms and not a big lecture hall of 200 kids. I knew I could get help and understand what I’m learning here and get a good education. I just felt like this place was home. It was a perfect distance from home. I liked everything about it.”

She knew playing time wouldn’t be a given. Senior Morgan Moeller, a Roger Bacon High School product, came into the 2026 campaign as a three-year starter in goal. Senior Emma Gramke and freshman Adelaide Roth are also goalies on the roster.

Sakach and Moeller battled for the starting spot throughout the preseason. On Sept. 1, when ONU opened the season at Wittenberg, Sakach was a spectator. Moeller got the start and went the distance in a 2-1 victory.

Sakach admitted that sitting out the opener gave her a defeated feeling. But she took it stoically and continued to work.

But Tierney wanted to give Sakach a shot as well. Her nearly 6-foot frame and athleticism are hard to resist in that position. The Ohio Northern coach said the goalie situation led to “probably one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make since I’ve been here.”

Sakach pitched a shutout in a 0-0 tie with Carnegie Mellon in the second game and has only sat out twice since. One was the second day of a two-game swing to New York. The other was Senior Day.

Tierney said he loads up the Polar Bears’ nonconference schedule to prepare for OAC play and the postseason. Seniors Caroline Hennegan and Macy Hawkins key an ONU defense that typically keeps the goalies from getting peppered with a lot of shots, so Tierney wanted to evaluate Sakach on a body of work and not just a game or two.

“The way soccer is, you’re standing out there for 90 minutes and you only get one moment, so we’re not going to define something on one moment,” Tierney said. “We were giving her more opportunities in that hard nonconference schedule. We wanted to see how she was going to react to some of them, and she reacted really well. She kind of grasped it and took it from there. She’s made me look like a really good coaching making that decision.”

Sakach said she was nervous before her first start. She just tried to keep it simple.

“I just told myself it wasn’t anything different,” Sakach said. “It was just a soccer game. I’ve been playing it forever. I know how to play. I know what to do. I’ve just got to execute.”

Sakach said beating out a three-year starter was an intimidating thought, but she faced the challenge head-on.

“I thought I was going to have to work 10 times harder to even try to see the field,” Sakach said. “Coming in, I just had a goal to play, not to step on toes or anything. Just try to win a spot and be competitive about it. I worked hard in practice and just put my head down and tried to earn everyone’s respect and show my best self.”

Tierney said the Polar Bears have a history of outstanding goalie play. He said Sakach had that look as soon as Ohio Northern started recruiting her.

“As soon as we showed up, we knew it,” Tierney said. “Then it was how many soccer and basketball games we could go to trying to convince her to come here.”

Tierney said Sakach’s next step as a player is strengthening her soccer IQ and being less hard on herself when she gives up a goal. She admitted being highly perturbed last Sunday when ONU squandered a 2-0 lead against Capital in the OAC tournament final before winning 3-2 in double overtime.

“I get frustrated with myself because I hold myself to a really high standard,” Sakach said. “That’s how I was taught growing up. Be the best version of yourself every day and hold yourself to the highest standard and even more after that.”

She conceded that her relationship with Moeller is a little awkward. When a freshman takes a senior’s spot, that’s only natural.

“She’s been nice, we’re friends, but at some points you could tell she was frustrated,” Sakach said. “I try to kill her with kindness and be nice, but also be humble about stuff like this so I don’t flaunt it in her face.”

Sakach is happy to report that what she’s found at ONU is similar to her experience at Badin in terms of culture.

“The girls are stronger and faster – I’m 18 playing against 22-year-old girls – but it’s the same culture vibes as Badin,” Sakach said. “The seniors set the culture here like we did last year at Badin. We’re a team. We’re a family. We play for each other. Coming here, that was set from Day 1, which was reassuring. It also hit home and I knew I picked the right place when we started talking about all that stuff.”

She often thinks about her Badin days and stays in contact with Morgan Byrne, who was the goalie for the Rams this season.

Sakach’s time as a soccer/basketball player at Badin hit a rough patch when she was a sophomore. She suffered a compound finger fracture on her right hand while playing club soccer right after the Rams’ soccer season and ultimately had to miss almost the entire basketball campaign.

The injury led to two surgeries. Sakach eventually came back to play soccer in the summer.

“I got three pins in my finger, then I was septic and I got a bone infection — they had to chip away the bone,” Sakach said. “It took a long time to heal. I felt like my recruiting process was really set back for a while because I couldn’t play.

“I learned how to write with my left hand and had to learn how to do simple things like getting dressed in the morning. It was mentally straining, but I think I got mentally stronger from it.”

She wasn’t always a goalie. Indeed, Sakach was a field player in her younger days and said she made the switch around the sixth grade. She got moved up to a higher-lever team within the Ohio Elite program after that squad’s keeper suffered a concussion.

“I said I’d try it,” Sakach said. “I was the tallest person on the field and I knew how to catch a ball because of basketball, so my coach put me in there and I found out I was actually pretty good at it. My brother Ben was a goalie, so I kind of helped him and sometimes practiced with him, so I thought I could figure it out.”

Why did the position get such a grip on her?

“I just love it,” Sakach said. “We always said pressure was a privilege. Having a lot of pressure on you all the time because you’re the last line of defense … I love that part. I like the anticipation of it all, the anxiety and the adrenaline kick that it gives you.”

Slusher noted that Sakach saw some action in the field on Senior Night in 2025. He believes she could’ve been a quality high school player outside of the goal if she had taken that route.

“But she’s a special goalkeeper. She really is a field general,” Slusher said. “She’s the one and only girl to ever pull a prank on me at Badin High School. She brings fun to the table, but when it comes to work rate, she’s always near the top. In races, sprints, long-distance runs, she was always up there, which is impressive.”

Sakach said she wanted to make it back to Badin to watch some soccer games this season, but it never worked out. She’s hoping to see the Rams play basketball this winter.

The appeal of basketball is still there for Sakach. She’s looking forward to some upcoming intramural hoops with her ONU soccer teammates and added, “I told them I’ll take care of the rebounds and layups. That’s about all I’m good for.”

“I kind of miss Sundy yelling at me,” added Sakach, referring to Badin basketball coach Tom Sunderman. “Basketball was just fun for me. My mind-set was just go hard and have fun.

“Once you leave Badin, you always kind of miss it. Everyone says they’ll never come back, but the Ramily’s just different. It’s a corny word, everyone hates to use it, but I feel like it’s really true. Even the people you really weren’t close with in high school, they still reach out.”

For now, Sakach is focused on making an impact in the NCAA tournament. Then it’s on to offseason workouts and the Polar Bears’ spring season.

Sakach said she’s been surprised “and really grateful” for her success as a freshman. But every season is a new season, so she’s not taking anything for granted.

“I need to refine all my skills and keep pushing because I know a freshman’s going to come in next year and try to do the same thing I did,” Sakach said. “So it’s all about keeping my head down and grinding and just trying to get better and better.”

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