Sweet Home’s boys soccer team fell to Junction City 3-0 at Husky Field in their last match of the season.
“I actually thought that we played pretty well,” said Head Coach Eric Stutzer.
Junction City scored its first goal when a corner kick trickled in within the first 15 minutes of the game.
“It really wasn’t even a shot. I was a little bit disappointed in that,” Stutzer said.
“But we seemed to right the ship after that, and then we put some pretty good offensive pressure on them,” he said.
He said his team had two really good opportunities in the first half that were on frame, which “we probably should have scored on.”
“We were struggling a little bit on our left side with some of our midfield play, but the right side was making up for it and we were getting a lot of penetration and ball movement to the outside of the field,” Stutzer said.
Sweet Home was down 1-0 at halftime.
With the visitors maintaining that lead early in the second half, things got “a little chippy there for a while,” Stutzer said.
Freshman Andrew Snyder-Thorstad was ejected after receiving a red card.
The Huskies were issued two yellow cards as well, and Junction City received one yellow card, all in the second half.
The red card forced the Huskies to go down to 10 players.
“We just weren’t able to right the ship after that, without all the personnel in,” said Stutzer. “It was a really hard adjustment to make.”
Sweet Home also lost two senior starters after Jaxsen Brown and Judah Christman went down with injuries.
Junction City was able to tack on two more goals in a 20-minute period against the depleted Sweet Home squad.
But the Huskies started playing better toward the end of the game.
“The last 15 minutes of the game we finally were able to get shape again and put the offensive pressure back on,” said Stutzer. “We had the ball on their end of the field and seemed to do pretty well, but we just couldn’t find the back of the net. Our shots were a bit off and we were taking a little too long on release.”
On the positive side, Stutzer said “I think it was one of the best passing games that we had all year. We were stringing six or seven passes together a lot more consistently than we have any other game.”
Looking back on the season as a whole, Stutzer said “I feel like we did a lot better this season than we have in the previous two seasons. There was a lot of improvement. You can see that from score spreads.”
“Before, we were getting blown out by some of the teams that we were playing,” he said. “This year we were competitive, with the exception of the Stayton games and maybe the Philomath game.”
“That is a huge change from where we were at before, when we couldn’t be competitive at all,”
He said. “We were able to finally get some balls in the net, and we had a lot more offensive push and offensive opportunities than in the last couple of years.”
Looking ahead, he said “There’s a lot to look forward to. This group of freshmen and sophomores is very talented.”
But he said, “We have a lot of work to do. Learning how to finish opportunities, as well as the emotional part of the game, which is something you would normally be learning on a JV squad with a lot less pressure.”
“I think some teams are going to have to watch us a little more closely than they have before. Before, I think it was a given for some of the teams in our conference that facing us would be a pretty easy game for them. But this year, it was a lot harder. They really had to fight for it.”
Stutzer said that “As we improve and get a little bit better we’re going to continue to put more pressure on other teams. Point spreads are going to get smaller and we could sneak up and win some games.”
“We’re starting to move out of the doldrums and into some area where we can actually be competitive,” he said.
He noted the challenges some of the teams in Sweet Home’s conference present.
“It’s always going to be difficult to be competitive with some of the toughest teams in the state, and that’s what’s represented in our league,” Stutzer said. “But now we have the mentality that we only had a one goal difference with Sisters this year and were able to play pretty evenly with Cascade the first time we played them. That really bodes well and creates a sense of confidence that there are at least a couple teams in our league that we can really compete with and match up well against, if we play well.”
In the offseason, Stutzer said “We need to get in the weight room. We need to get bigger, stronger and faster. We’re never going to be able to compete with a team like Stayton unless we can put speed on.”
“Stayton’s got speed in a number of positions, and it’s hard to defend against that. We have some quick guys, but having quick guys and having a high level of team speed is totally different.”
In addition, he emphasized that his team has to work on technical accuracy.
“Our technical accuracy is going to be the gateway to everything we want to do tactically. We need to be able to string more than five or six passes together and be able to possess the ball. And I don’t see anything in this group that would lead me to believe that that’s not something we can accomplish. I think it’s a very realistic goal.”
He said that if his players “follow through on their end and we can keep the level of interest and level of commitment high, we could be a very interesting team to watch coming into next season and especially in the season after that.”