Soccer

It was a case of déjà vu for the Year 8 Boys Soccer team, who returned to Knox Park on Thursday 23 May for a Soccer round robin against our local rivals. 

Eleven players from last year’s Year 7 team reunited and returned to school with similar results. After finishing last year’s tournament in 3rd place with one win, one draw, and loss, the Year 8 squad experienced similar fortunes, winning one game, drawing one game, and only losing against the two teams from Rowville.

We started the day on a positive note, winning 1-0 against Upwey. Our goalkeeper, Joshua, was fantastic on the last line of defence, blocking every Upwey opportunity. He was well supported by a stingy defence, led by the two Oscars, Thomas, and Marcus. Adam was our only goal-scorer for the game, working well with wingers Will and Sean, who never stopped running.

We knew that playing Rowville East and Rowville West would be a tough ask, and we did our best to limit the damage in both games.

Adam and Noah came up with an innovative 5-2-1-2 formation to create a wall against Rowville East, and it successfully prevented our opponents from scoring for the first five minutes. The dam wall eventually broke due to a few messy errors in defence, but our result of 0-8 was on par with the other teams’ performances against Rowville’s highly trained Sports Academy team. Christian was excellent at keeping one of Rowville’s star forwards quiet, while Liam and Jack did not give up chasing their opponents.

Our 0-5 loss to Rowville West in the next game was disappointing, but new goalie Oscar G did a great job at repelling numerous attacking plays, while Hudson and Oscar H gave us some booming clearing kicks from defence.

We returned to form in our final game against Heritage. I switched the magnets around to give Landon a look in the front half, and he returned the favour with a first-half goal. In the next half, playing with a four-person offense (Zaid, Adam, Noah, and Sean), we hit the lead when a courageous running play from Will set up Adam for his second goal of the day. Unfortunately, Heritage struck late to draw the game at 2-all.

In a jam-packed day of four games, the Year 8 Soccer Squad are to be commended for running out the four games and still having gas left in the tank at the very end. They competed in a sportsmanlike manner with respect for their opponents and the referees.

Year 8 squad: Zaid Ablahad, Thomas Bennett, Noah Eletr, Adam Eltobgy, Oscar Glaister, Liam Goh, Jack Handley, Oscar Heinley, Sean McCabe, Hudson Shaffer, William Street, Christian Tong, Joshua Toohey, Landon White, Marcus Yang

Kevin Hawkins

Coach