It was a lousy night for soccer, plain and simple.
Playing on a wet field in mud, the Highlands boys soccer team fell to visiting Hayesville 4-1 in its home finale, miring the Highlanders in the muck of those in the Smoky Mountain Conference hoping for a break to get invited to the N.C. High School Athletic Association Class 1A state tournament.
A victory would have helped Highlands chances significantly.
The Yellowjackets, the regular season Smoky Mountain Conference champs with a 9-1 mark, scored four unanswered goals to erase a 1-0 first half deficit after Lane Tingen punched in a 15-footer from the right side barely 10 minutes into the game.
That lead held for 12 minutes until Hayesville’s Ryelan Snowden tied the score at 1-1 on a 35-yard penalty kick the junior forward “made it bend like Beckham” around a Highlands wall of players to find the left hand corner of the crease.
The Yellowjackets put the finishing touches on the win with three second half goals.
The Highlanders sit in third place in the SMC behind Hayesville (9-1) and Swain (7-3) with a 5-4 conference mark. Blue Ridge Early College, last year’s SMC champs are in fourth place with a 5-5 record.
Highlands wraps up its SMC schedule with a Halloween night trip to Cherokee (0-11, 0-9). In their first meeting on Oct. 28, the Highlanders shutout the Braves 6-0. Cherokee has been outscored by its opponents 79-2 over the course of the 2019 season.
A standings anomaly, this soccer season marks the first time in the past six seasons that a team other than Highlands or Blue Ridge has finished first in the regular season standings. Since 2012, when Murphy finished first with a 9-1 SMC record, Highlands has won the regular season championship four times – including a three-peat from 2013-2015 – and BREC has won it twice in 2016 and 2018.
The Highlanders honored its five seniors following the conclusion of the Hayesville game. Seniors Bill Miller, Pablo Jimenez, Dillon Schmitt, Patrick Woods and Carlos May-Gomez were honored in a post-game ceremony.
