With a record of 5-5 for the season, the Highlands School varsity boy’s soccer team finished its season with a loss to Mountain Heritage High School last Monday, 2-1.
The Highlanders took a long drive to Burnsville and were able to keep the score even at 0-0 at the half.
With about 20 minutes left in the game, The Highlanders took the lead 1-0.
With 10 minutes to go in the game, the referee awarded Mountain Heritage a penalty kick after a handball in the box, which the Cougars buried to even the game. Right off the restart, the Cougars scored again to take the lead and end the scoring effort 2-1.
“Coming out the gate, we played extremely well, holding them to 0-0 at the half,” HHS head coach Caleb Brown said. “The handball in the box was questionable and it sucked all of our momentum out of us. Regardless, it was a hard-fought game, and I think we would have done a little better if we had a deeper bench. We had a total of four on the bench, but only two could play. Our defense held strong most of the match. We only had maybe three corners and Mountain Heritage had eight or nine. So, we weren’t necessarily defending our best on the corners, but our goalkeeper had a great game.”
Throughout the season, Brown said that he saw his team start to bond.
“I think our team started playing a lot better soccer,” Brown said. “Rather than kickball, they started connecting passes and started using tactics in the game. They started sending the ball out wide then sending a ball over center and making big switches. So, I think they started to grasp the vision of the game more, which I wanted them to see.”
Brown said his senior group was hard working but wished they could have gone farther in the playoffs.
“We had a great group of seniors,” Brown said. “One of our seniors stepped up and filled in as our back up goalkeeper and he actually had to step up as starting goalkeeper during the playoff game. They were all just great kids and had great attitudes. I wish their season would have ended a little differently, but they placed second in the conference behind Swain. Overall, they were great kids, and they had a great attitude. They played hard and worked hard all season long. They wanted to get better, and they got more serious as the season went on.”
Looking forward to next season, Brown said they are going to continue working.
“We are going to continue to work on increasing our speed of play,” Brown said. “I think we are going to hold on to some of our formations that we played in this year. They ran a 4-4-2 very well, and they also ran a 4-3-3 well. We will have a lot of players return that really fell into their position this year. Next year, we definitely need to work a little more on conditioning. I was gone all summer with the National Guard, so I wasn’t here to get the boys conditioned for the season, which did the boys a little disservice. I think the most important thing is speeding up their rate of play. Come the end of the season, they started putting together passes and playing at that higher rate of play, so we just have to start next season at that same level.”
The Highlanders’ wins came against Summit 9-0, two wins against Cherokee 7-0 and 3-0 and two wins against Blue Ridge Early College 5-3 and 4-2.
- By Christopher Smith