On Friday, January 3oth, the Varsity Soccer team took the field against Skyline for their second district game of the season. They were heavily favored going into the game, but Jesuit needed a last-second goal to secure a tie.
Although Skyline only had one win coming into the game, the Raiders surprised Jesuit with an early goal, scoring in the fourth minute. “We were distracted and just weren’t focused in the beginning of the game,” attested Aldo Quevedo ’17 on the Rangers’ slow start. “We reacted rather than attacking from the beginning.” The early goal seemed to energize the Jesuit players, and from that point on, they began to dominate the game.
The Rangers prevented their opponents from scoring, but they were unable to take advantage of their own opportunities to tie the game at 1-1, even though they had a number of shots on goal and kept the ball mostly on Skyline’s half of the field. Frustration mounted, and, eventually, multiple Jesuit players were given yellow cards.
Skyline still led the Rangers 1-0 as time began to run out. Jesuit’s final chance was a corner kick with fewer than twenty seconds left on the clock. Almost every player from both teams crowded in Skyline’s penalty box as Ben Sloan ’15 lined up for the corner kick, with Jesuit’s hope for a tie against an inferior, Skyline team slowly ticking away. Sloan kicked a perfect ball to fellow senior Jacob Su, who simply “nudged” it in with a well-placed header to score. Tying the game with four seconds to go, Su left the Raiders no chance to take the lead. He later downplayed his importance in the play, claiming “[He] didn’t really do much and Sloan just played a really good ball.”
Realizing they just squeaked out a tie in a game they should have lost, Jesuit players swarmed the two game-saving seniors, Sloan and Su. While they didn’t necessarily perform well, Jesuit players cheered along with the fans at the end of the game as if they had just beaten the Raiders, whose players walked off of the field, robbed of a win.
If the Rangers hope to have success against tough district opponents such as Irving Nimitz or Irving MacArthur, they will need to play stronger, earlier in games, and they must also capitalize on their chances to score.
Make sure to cheer on the Varsity Soccer team when they play the WT White Longhorns and the Irving MacArthur Cardinals this upcoming week!
