Taft 3, Sweet Home 2
It was a bitter loss for the Huskies, who led 2-1 at halftime Monday.
“We made it close, I guess,” said Coach Al Grove, whose team was coming off their worse loss of the season, at Philomath last Thursday. “The kids played hard. They played better than they did against Philomath.”
Freshman Alex Santana started things off with a goal off a breakaway midway in the first half. Then Dakotah Keys scored off an assist to put Sweet Home up 2-0.
But the Tigers clawed their way back into the game with less than two minutes to go in the half, scoring off a corner kick that wasn’t well defended by the Huskies.
In the second half, Taft scored twice more, the first coming off a penalty kick and the second off a cross from the sideline.
“They do a good job of centering the ball from the sidelines to the middle and they crossed it over and it went in,” Grove said.
A problem for Sweet Home was near misses.
“One ball hit the top and the side bar, one missed by inches and one was just stopped by the goalie,” Grove said. “If Dakotah (Keys) had put it a few more inches over, it would have gone in.”
The irony was that, even with a winless record in league, Sweet Home could have finished third in the Val-Co standings by winning Monday and again versus Newport next Monday, Oct. 29.
The Huskies will end their season against the Cubs at home at 4 p.m.
Philomath 6, Sweet Home 0
The Huskies never got on track and Philomath took full advantage of it, scoring three goals in the first half and another three in the second.
Grove said it was frustrating to watch, considering Sweet Home took the Warriors to the wire in their previous meeting.
“We didn’t play well at all,” he said. “It’s probably the worst we’ve played all year. They played better but we just played terrible.”
Grove said the Huskies’ performance was particularly disappointing considering the progress the team has shown this year in playing team ball and playing hard.
“It was definitely visible to anyone who was there that we didn’t want it very bad,” he said. “This was one of those games.”