Two contests on Sweet Home’s boys soccer schedule, on March 23 against Cascade and March 25 against Sisters, were cancelled.
“The primary reason was injuries,” said Head Coach Eric Stutzer. “We just were pretty riddled with injuries.”
The team was down to 11 players on Tuesday, and one of those was a pretty inexperienced player and wasn’t 100% healthy either, he said.
So Stutzer made the call to cancel Tuesday’s match against Cascade.
The team was then down to 10 players on Thursday for the scheduled Sisters match, so Stutzer also cancelled that game.
“We have a number of injuries and a number of players that are recovering from injury,” he said. “We also had a couple that went out on family vacations due to spring break. They had some plans that were already in the works well before they decided that they were going to do this season during March. We couldn’t really do much to change plans on some of that stuff.”
On Monday, the boys got back on the field to play Taft at home. They lost 5-2.
Usual veteran starters Mason Lopez and Judah Christman were not playing because of injury.
Stutzer took away some positives from the game.
“Our problems in the midfield are getting better. I thought we played a much more solid midfield game.”
However, he said that “Defensively, we’re still struggling a bit.”
He said that his team came out a little flat in the first half. “I feel like we weren’t playing to our potential. In the second half, we were winning a lot more fifty fifty balls.”
He was pleased that the boys were able to score twice.
“That was a big win, especially for a young team, putting some points on the board and feeling like they can score.”
Taft was up 2-0 at halftime. Then the Huskies scored a goal in the first few minutes of the second half. The goal was scored by Caleb Christman, who shot the ball past two defenders and the goalie to bring the game to 2-1. Taft answered right back with a goal of their own to go up 3-1.
Ben Tolman then scored for the Huskies with Christman assisting to bring the score to 3-2. Taft tacked on two more goals before the final whistle to win 5-2.
Sweet Home’s next contest will be against Stayton on the road on April 1. The boys lost 8-0 to Stayton earlier this season.
“Stayton is going to be a difficult team no matter what way you look at it,” said Stutzer. “But I really feel like the first time we played them we didn’t have the best game. We had a lot of adversity that we were pushing through with player health and different things.”
“I think that we can play them a lot tighter this time,” he said. “I think we can see some improvement on where our level of competition is at in the game.”