DECATUR - St. Teresa's David Peters has a simple yet effective analogy about the direction of his team and that of Warrensburg-Latham as the soccer season began to take shape.

"We're like two trains coming full speed at each other," Peters said.

The last stop before the inevitable collision came Thursday at the Okaw Valley Conference tournament. Warrensburg had its semifinal with Sullivan well in hand. St. Teresa, playing just a few feet away on the second field at the MidState Soccer Complex, was in danger of derailing.

The Bulldogs had dominated play. Yet with 30 minutes remaining against Tolono Unity, the game was tied and Unity had a penalty kick.

The Rockets missed out on their golden opportunity, and St. Teresa rebounded with two goals to eventually earn a 3-1 victory.

The rivalry can resume in earnest, starting with Saturday's noon showdown for the conference title. Yet it was unclear if St. Teresa (7-0-2) was going to advance before that penalty kick sailed wide.

The Bulldogs had plenty of chances, yet only had one first-half goal to show for their efforts. Unity equalized when Nate Cain scored on a breakaway off of a counter-attack.

Another counter earned the Rockets their penalty kick. When it missed wide right, St. Teresa breathed a sigh of relief and went to work. Peters put home the go-ahead goal with 14:29 to play, and Matthew Bajjalieh tacked on an insurance goal seven minutes later.

It gave the Bulldogs a happy ending to an otherwise frustrating match.

"It's very frustrating, especially on the corner kicks, where we set up plays and the plays seem to be working," St. Teresa coach Leo Berger said. "Our guys get a head on it, and it goes over or out or through. You sit there and go, 'I can't diagram it any more. Everything we did was right.' The set plays are what we should be scoring on every time."

All of that washed away when Peters eventually found the back of the net.

"I think we had a lot of chances to finish, and if we could've, it have been a different game, but it wasn't. That's something we've been working on the last month in practice is finishing," Peters said. "If we can finish on all the shots we have, we're going to be dangerous the rest of the year."

St. Teresa has wanted a crack at Warrensburg since the Cardinals won last year's sectional game in overtime. That doesn't include the penalty-kick loss in last year's conference title game or the 1-0 dropped decision in the lone regular-season game.

"(The team) circled it, because we were the only team to take them to overtime," Berger said. "They were bound and determined that if we took them to overtime it was going to be us on top, but we'll see."

Warrensburg-Latham 7, Sullivan 0

Andrew Smith made a triumphant return to the lineup, notching a hat trick. Mike Gut added two goals and Zach Hawthorne had two assists as the Cardinals (10-0) rolled to a victory.

"He's been nursing a quad strain for a couple weeks, and he kind of admitted it was still bothersome ? if he's at 85 percent scoring three goals, I'm not going to complain too much," Warrensburg coach Kevin Emery said.

It might have been hard to concentrate with a potential showdown against St. Teresa looming, especially with the Bulldogs in action on the same field.

Yet focus wasn't a problem, except when a few players on the bench snuck a look at the scoreboard every now and then.

"They'd have been disappointed if it was somebody else," Emery said. "We feel like St. Teresa is the second best team in the conference, and we deserve to play them for the title, and they deserve to play us.

"We play them again next month, but the earlier the better as far as the kids are concerned. It turned into a friendly rivalry. Every team has those that aren't friendly. Each team respects the other to a point where it's not going to be a malicious game, but it's going to be hard and intense. It's what we like to see."

Todd Engle can be reached at tengle@herald-review.com or 421-7970.