Sweet Home boys soccer lost two home games to tough league opponents last week, falling to Newport 8-0 and Philomath 6-0.
“I didn’t think we played very well against Newport,” said Head Coach Eric Stutzer. “I think we were really struggling to put anything sound together, just because of our lack of experience and depth.”
“There were some really great individual performances,” the coach said. “We had some guys that stepped up and played hard the entire game, but it’s really hard when you have so many people out due to sickness and injury, and you really don’t have a cohesive unit any more.”
Sweet Home has 26 players in its program, but was only able to field 12 that day.
Laughing, Stutzer said “They call soccer the beautiful game, but there wasn’t a lot of beauty in what we were doing.”
Newport (5-4-4) scored seven goals in the first half and got their eighth 10 minutes into the second, at which point the game was called.
Thirteen Sweet Home boys suited up for the Philomath game, in which Stutzer thought his team played better.
“We made really good adjustments in practice,” he said. “We knew what was coming and that we’d have a number of people out. We came ready to play. You had a defending state champion that came into our house, and we really didn’t play them too bad.”
He said “We were getting and contesting 50/50 balls, and our shape was much better. Our defensive look was much better. Despite not having the guys in the game that we needed to have in the game, there was a lot of improvement, and I was very impressed with that.”
The Warriors (9-0-3) scored three goals in the first half and three in the second.
Sweet Home closes the regular season out with a home game against North Marion (4-4-5) at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 25. If Sweet Home were to win or tie that game, they would secure a play-in berth. If they lose, there is still a possibility that the Huskies would get a postseason spot, depending on what happens in other 4A games, according to Stutzer.
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