By GANNON HANEVOLD
Moapa Valley Progress
The Moapa Valley High School Boys Soccer team took on two challenging teams last week. On Monday, they played an out-of-league game against Adelson, who is yet to take a loss in the season so far. One of their 11 wins this season, in fact, was a game against Moapa Valley, where the Lions won by a final score of 7-2. The Pirates’ second game last week was against the Chaparral Cowboys. The Cowboys were 4-1 in league play going into the game. Needless to say, the Moapa team had a lot on its plate, however they fought as hard as they could have.
Early in the game against Adelson, the Pirates found themselves in the lead, 1-0 off of an Israel Rubio goal. At halftime, the Lions had knotted it up 1-1.
Despite the strong start to the game by the Pirates, the Lions ended up scoring three more goals in the second half that gave them a 4-1 win.
Head Coach Jared Bushman pointed towards injuries as one of the factors in the loss for the Pirates, saying, “Valdemar Braunstein had a little leg knock, and it was a non-league game, so we rested him for the second half. Even though we played alright, that hurt us because he has been playing outstanding lately, especially defensively.”
Two of the Lions’ goals came off of penalties. Bushman pointed towards one of those as being a key mistake made by his team.
Although Moapa left with a defeat, Bushman mentioned that the Pirates did improve upon their score against the same team earlier in the year, and said the team is “not dissatisfied” with the result.
As for the second game against Chaparral, more inactives plagued the Pirates. Two standout players in Isaiah Fairchild and Israel Rubio weren’t on the field on Thursday, which certainly had an impact.
The Cowboys took advantage of a scrambling Pirates team and won 7-0.
“The boys played admirably but we just didn’t have enough firepower,” Bushman said, “We competed really hard but we got outclassed by a better team.”
As for the players that were forced to fill in for Moapa’s missing pieces, he said, “The kids that had to step up and take on more minutes played really well. The skill level just wasn’t there to score, and when you don’t score, the other side has possession longer. It’s just the nature of the game.”
Overall, on the week, Bushman was not upset with the way his team played, saying they “stepped up” after a poor performance the week prior.
He also alluded to the fact that Moapa Valley has yet to have fallen out of the playoff race, and if they can gather wins against Virgin Valley and Boulder City coming up, they will be in a tiebreaker situation for a playoff spot. It sounds as if the team is optimistic they can get to that point.
