The highly anticipated boys first soccer game of the year took place on the SDA stadium field on Friday. Many students were there supporting and leading cheers throughout the course of the game, as well as parents from the SDA team and the opposing team, Del Norte High School. The final score was 1-3.

The boys soccer team knew that it was going to be a tough game, although they were optimistic.

“This is a new team with a lot of new players. I expected that we would play as a team and that we would compete, and we did so I was happy,” said senior Ethan Boutelle.

The game took off at a quick pace. The ball spent time on both sides of the field, and was frantically knocked around by players. As time went on, both teams became more composed and began connecting more passes.

During the 17th minute, Del Norte scored the first goal of the game.

“Our midfield broke down and our back line was struggling,” said senior Brandon Adams, but SDA held the score at 0-1 for the remainder of the half.

The second half was met with lots of attacks on SDA’s goal, many of which were stopped by the keeper, junior David Schlesinger. Nonetheless, Del Norte broke through the defense once again in the 46th minute, bringing the score to 0-2.

After the second goal against them, SDA suddenly had a new surge of energy and picked up the pace. Just two minutes after Del Norte’s second goal, junior Patrick Rahilly scored, bringing up the score to 1-2.

Both sides began to play more aggressively, and the crowd was growing more enthusiastic once they realized that it was still any team’s game. Suddenly, in the 60th minute, Del Norte scored a third goal, bringing the score to 1-3.

The rest of the game yielded multiple scoring opportunities from both sides. Both teams shifted from playing more defensively to more offensively, with SDA’s back line moving forward. During the last 10 minutes, the ball spent the majority of the time on Del Norte’s half, although no goals were scored. “We need to be able to finish [score goals], but communication was great and we had some good passes” said Adams.

Although the game resulted in a 1-3 loss for SDA, players remained optimistic for the season. “We could have done better, but it’s a really new team and there’s nowhere but up to go from here,” said Boutelle.