Sweet Home lost at home 12-0 to Cascade Sept. 24 and then on the road 7-0 to Sisters on Thursday in boys soccer.
Cascade “was a little bit better than we expected them to be,” said Coach Eric Stutzer. The Cougars had a coaching change that changed the way they play the game. Last year, Cascade tended to “force it down the center.”
This year, the Cougars have changed it up, Stutzer said, although it wasn’t the key issue for his team.
Cascade had a lot of speed out front, and the Huskies played flat the first half, he said, especially “after the showing that had at Lebanon offensively and defensively.”
The Huskies lost 6-0 to Lebanon the previous week. Stutzer said that was probably the game the Huskies have played the best so far this year.
“We were running about half the speed that Cascade was,” Stutzer said, for a variety or reasons, including illnesses on the team; and the Huskies were not executing. Cascade scored seven goals in the first half, five of them in the first 15 minutes.
“I made some adjustments fairly quickly,” Stutzer said. He pulled the entire mid and defensive staff to the side to talk to each individually.
“We were able at halftime to kind of right the ship a little,” Stutzer said. They played more competitively, but they still struggled with winning 50-50 balls.
Cascade had a lot of fast break opportunities, he said, but a lot of that had to do with the Cougars’ speed against the three freshmen and a sophomore on defense.
“We didn’t expect the speed and some of the movement off the back end,” Stutzer said.
The Huskies were better prepared Thursday at Sisters.
“I feel like we were mentally prepared to play Sisters,” he said. “We warmed up better.”
But the team had a lot of confusion at mid and in back on defense, he said. Sisters builds up on the sides with overlapping slot runs, which is designed to spread the defense.
The Huskies defense kept spreading out for some reason, Stutzer said. “For whatever reason, we couldn’t tighten up on defense.”
The Huskies gave up two quick goals, and Sisters finished the first half with four goals.
In both games, on offense, “it’s just we weren’t capitalizing on what we were doing,” Stutzer said. The Huskies had changes including one-on-one opportunities against the keeper in each game that missed the box.
The Huskies aren’t seeing the field well at this point, not seeing the open positions and taking too much time on passes and shots, he said. “It’s just our own inexperience.”
They’re working on that this week in practice, Stutzer said, and they will improve by the end of the season.
On defense, the team’s making some changes that will be good in the long-term, Stutzer said, and the team needs to communicate better.
“Hopefully, we can begin to put that together this week,” he said.
The Huskies were scheduled to travel to Newport Tuesday evening, host Woodburn at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 3, then visit Philomath at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 8.