The morale of the boys’ soccer team sank a little after opening the season with a loss against Robbinsdale Armstrong and ties against Eden Prairie and Break. But they did not let it take them down and have since been able to rise to a series of wins.
Looking back on the start of the season, the team feels they could have won a lot of the games they lost and tied. “As a team we felt that we were better than how we were playing, and we all wanted to do well this season,” said captain Jake Rocheford. Determined to turn their season around, they knew they had to make some changes, “so we switched our line up around putting Gunnar [Knusten] in back and we all just stepped up our game,” said Rocheford.
The Red Knights felt great relief when their first victory of the season came against Irondale in a close match of 2-1. The victory gave a morale boost for the entire team. They now felt they had begun to perform at their skill level.
Everyone was put on edge by the slow start to the season, but as captain Jake Rocheford points out, the 2006 state champion boys’ team started their season with a similar record, whereas last year the team went undefeated for the majority of the season but crumbled at the state tournament. “The team is hoping to make up for last year’s disappointment at state, and we are going to try and get everyone off of school to come watch the team play in the Metrodome,” said Rocheford.
The team was ranked sixth in the North Suburban Conference, but their ranking has since climbed since their 2-1 win against Rochester Lourdes who was ranked third in the conference.
Facing rival St. Louis Park last Tuesday, September 16, head coach Dave Platt knew it would be a difficult game. St. Louis Park, with a record of seven and one, has come out very strong against BSM in the past few years, last year completely dominating the game. However, with SLP graduating many of their star players in the previous year, BSM was decided to come out strong and challenging this time around. If that was their goal, the team was successful.
The game was evenly matched, and although BSM was defending for most of the game, the forwards had a few breakaways and shots on goal. The first half passed without a goal for either team, and even though 20 minutes into the second half junior Michael McCarthy shot the ball into the net, the goal was unvalid because McCarthy had been off-sides at the time. This exact situation repeated itself with SLP’s team ten minutes later, once again marked unvalid because of the off-sides rule.
The game finally ended after two overtimes, with the score still at zero to zero. However, the team considers this outcome a success, in that they were able to successfully defend against a strong team like St. Louis Park, which offers a promising future for the team.
Apart from the always supportive “super-fans” attending every game, the team has had an underwhelming number of supporters in attendance at games so far this season. With high hopes for the current season, the team assures an encouraging fan base would most definitely aid in their performance and road to the state tournament.
