Senior Soccer Gets Started

After three practices, and a total of six hours of playing together, the Senior Boys headed down to SMUS in Victoria for the annual ISA’s soccer tournament. Confident in our abilities but yet to learn everyone’s names, we knew that this tournament would be the grounds for our development as a team. Unluckily for us, however, our first game pitted us against the infamous GNS, a team with a storied history of provincial championships. The boys, however, did not back down, refusing to slack off even as the well practiced GNS penetrated our defense with their set plays and teamwork. Though we suffered a defeat, we came out of the game confident losing only 3-1 to a teams with years more practice then we had had. And so we looked forward to our next game against Collingwood, a team we didn’t know much about. Fresh out of the mall and with all sorts of greasy food still in our stomachs, we began our second match. Right off the bat you could tell something was different already: we had improved: the defense more sure of themselves, the midfielders more in control and the strikers with better accuracy. Collingwood presented a strong side, but we managed to hang on ending the first half even at 0-0, and beginning the second believing we could win. That, however, was not to be the case. Unluckily for us, Collingwood managed to slip in two greasy goals beating us 2-0 and going on to win Gold in the tournament. Somewhat disappointed after what we felt could have been a win for us, we headed back to Brentwood to rest up for the two games we had the next day. As the sun rose the next morning along with it came the aches and pains of 18 soccer players in the middle of a tournament, the only remedy seeming to be the generous amounts of pain relief cream a few of us had. After warming up, however, we soon came to realize the pain wasn’t as bad as we thought and we prepared for the game at hand. Once again, right off the ba,t our team showed steady improvement with our resident Brazilian, Breno C, Whittal ‘16 scoring the first goal. We continued the game in much the same fashion dominating the play although we seemed to have had tens of offside whistles called against us. We finished the game at 3-1 in our favor, our first victory as a team. Our final, but definitely most important game brought with it a little more than the joy of winning. Against Shawnigan, our honor was also on the line. Our rival school had a big team with most of the players recognizable from their last year’s rugby squad. Coming off our recent win, however, we were not daunted and looked forward to the challenge they would pose. The match began evenly with no score as we began the second half until Shawnigan out of nowhere shot from 20 yards out and managed to slip the ball under the keeper’s arm.  But we would not give up.  Pushing back, we managed to quickly retaliate making the game 1-1. Then we applied even more pressure playing out the remainder of the game in their end but unable to score. We moved on to penalty kicks.  As the pressure mounted the kick takers went up and shot one by one until finally, in the 7th round, Austin N struck the ball beautifully into the upper right corner, and the following Shawnigan player missed the net wide to the right resulting in our victory.  Brentwood 4, SLS 3. Content with our results and starting to come together as a team, we headed back to Brentwood looking forward to the start of our league play on October 6th. Will M, Privett ‘16