On a warm late-summer day, the Taft Boys Thirds soccer team traveled way up in to Massachusetts to contend with an always tough Deerfield side. On a lovely, flat, large soccer field, Deerfield did a good job possessing the ball against an energetic Taft team. Each team had a couple of good chances in the first half but good defense and good goalkeeping kept the score at nil-nil as the referee’s whistle blew twice to end the half. Both Aidan Chan and Ryan Egan played well for Taft in the goal for the full eighty minutes. Deerfield opened the scoring in the 43rd minute as the Taft defense tried to clear the ball up the middle directly into the Deerfield offense. Quick pass and low shot yielded one nil. Then in the 50th minute Taft scored on the counter as Kevin Gunawan collected an errant free kick from Deerfield, carried the ball forward and delivered an excellent pass to Connor Walsh. Connor then took on the Deerfield defense by himself, a one on four. He cut back against the run of play and fired a beautiful shot inside the far post and high. I don’t think the lads in green expected Connor to be left footed. Such things must be noticed much earlier in the match. Unfortunately, our lads could not hold or build on that goal and gave up the game winner soon afterwards by clearing the ball through our own goalie box which a defender must NEVER do. The ball was collected by a lad in green who took a shot that was saved by Ryan and then a goal was earned off of the rebound, alas. Both teams played hard the rest of the way but our boys could not crack a very good Deerfield defense. The final whistle blew and the two one score held. Our boys played hard but not necessarily very well. We have a lot of work to do to get to where we want to be. We’ll practice hard and then battle against Brunswick on Wednesday at Taft at 3:30PM. See you there!