Stripe Out 2024
Game 1: (0-1-0)
30 August vs. St. James for STRIPE OUT (0-1)
Tonight, we open season 37 at Saint Thomas Aquinas with our well-known charity event, this year, once again, a Stripe Out for ALS, honoring former soccer dad, John Whigham—he was here last year for his last Stripe Out. Still, we continue to raise money for his favorite charity "I Am ALS."
We began the day with an all-team Mass at Ascension. Curt Whigham met us after Mass to give the boys some perspective on tonight's match and the background on this fundraiser.
Tim Zande coordinated this entire event (lots of work) and Cole Friedman (Robek's) and Curt Whigham (Bogie Golf) are our lead sponsors! We are very grateful.
We enter the 2024 campaign with one of the smallest varsity rosters I can recall. Tonight, we did have all of our extended varsity suited up, but regular varsity has 15 players who can physically play (2 are goalies). Eventually, we will get Santiago and Andsew back from injury, but that might be another month.
But we offered up a pretty salty starting line-up:
We fell for the second time ever to the Thunder (Lifetime, 16-2-2). And honestly, we played pretty well.
We gave up a late first-half goal where the St. James left wing beat our right back, who did not have a centerback in coverage for him or another centerback in the balance position. So, it basically involved beating the right back and the keeper, and it was a goal. Jones' ground finish to the back post was textbook good.
We did generate enough opportunities to score multiple goals, much less one. But we have all been in 1-0 soccer games enough to not be too surprised when they happen. Some days, the ball just refuses to go into the net.
Neither team used much of their bench; we should have used ours a bit more, but in a 1-0 match, we are only looking for some goal to get the match even. We did not show much fatigue in our starters, and we only had two kids cramp up much at all. Befort needed to be stretched out a bit with about five minutes left.
Brody Siebert cramped himself out of the second half—I am sure that hurt us a bit as he comes into this season as our number-one scoring threat.
During the match, we moved Kitts back to his best position at left-back, and with that move came two or three excellent scoring opportunities. Kitts just missed wide right and wide left on two in the second half.
We had a ball where I believe Janeway boxed it, and Befort just did an upper-level dummy that froze every St. James defender. Omar had a good strike right at the keeper, but it looked like he had a half-second or more to place it in one of the corners. What a nice setup.
We were all disappointed in losing, but as Coach Grow pointed out after the match, all teams must overcome adversity to improve. We definitely need to improve and get a lot better in the front third of the field.
We, however, were excellent at generating set pieces, and we were close to scoring on 2-3 of them. (Befort's Dummy. Omar's Free Kick) We created 8 corners for the game and added in 3 dangerous throw-ins, with 6-7 free kicks—granted, most of the free kicks went to the keeper, but set pieces went pretty darn well.
Sophomore keeper Parker Lehn had quite a game. He snuffed out three attacks where he just slid through the ball before a Thunder player could get a shot off. He saved five balls, two of which were dangerous and came in rapid succession towards the end of the match.
Before tonight, we had lost on opening night only once in the last 35 years (2018 to St. James, again 0-1). Rockhurst is coming up on Thursday, and it is ranked number one in the country, so our resolve and mettle will be tested quickly.
After the Rock, we have our 3-game home Saints Classic tourney. So we are looking to grab at least 3 wins in our next four matches.
First Half:
Saints: Shots: 4 (2) Corners: 6 (Befort, Siebert 2, Bobby 2, Zinkus)
Thunder: Shots: 2 (2) Corners: 0
14:53 Jones (goal kick travels to midfield, where it comes out of the scrum for a quick through ball down the Thunder left flank as we are caught without secondary or tertiary shape).
Second Half:
Saints: Shots: 6 (2) Corners: 2 (Fuentes, Omar)
Thunder: Shots: 5 (4) (Parker did snuff out two break-aways) Corners: 1
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