Knights show mixed bag in season-opening loss to Patriots | Brazil Times
There were several different emotions radiating from the Northview boys soccer sideline following Thursday night’s season-opening loss to Terre Haute North.
Some were filled with optimism while others weren’t as rosy.
The reason behind them? Northview found itself in a two-goal deficit at halftime, which wasn’t where it hoped to be, but it was much better than in the program’s previous matchups against the Patriots. However, Terre Haute North added two more goals early in the second half and then padded its lead by scoring three more times in the final few minutes to finish off the 7-0 loss for the Knights.
Afterwards, Northview head coach JP Arvin acknowledged that his group competed much better against its annual season-opening opponent but pointed out that the scoreboard showed a seven-goal loss for the Knights – even if the final score felt closer – and because of that, they’ll go back to the drawing board to correct their mistakes.
“The scoreboard is the scoreboard. At the end of the day, we got beat by seven. I really thought we would do a lot better than that,” said Arvin.
What must be done to shorten the gap between what took place on Thursday and what Northview wants to happen on the field moving forward? Arvin has some ideas.
“We have to play, positionally, better,” Arvin said. “The biggest thing tonight was they were stepping-to much better than we did. They played the passing lanes better. Those two things matter. Some of our guys were playing way out and everybody else was having to adjust to them, and because of that, we were leaving huge gaps. Terre Haute North is good enough to exploit that, and they did. Once we get the film, it’ll be a lot easier to fix.”
One of those ideas played out around the midway point of the second half when the Knights moved Zac Styck, the team’s starting keeper, out of the goal and onto the field as a defender in the back row. Arvin inserted Keason Burgess, a freshman goal keeper who has drawn praise from the coaching staff for the promise he showed during the summer and into the preseason portion of the fall, into the goal.
And while Terre Haute North scored a couple of goals on the newly aligned Northview defense in the final moments of the evening, Arvin walked away feeling good about the option to have Styck and Burgess on the field at the same time.
“Styck wants to primarily play goalie, and I like him there, but he looked really good in the field. He looked really comfortable out there,” explained Arvin. “It’s something we wanted to get a look at, and it’s something we’d like to look at again.”
Will that be a look the Knights use in the near future? That remains to be seen.
But Arvin reminded his team that, regardless of what the scoreboard read or how they felt walking off the field on the north side of Terre Haute, it was the first of many games they’ll play this fall.
Northview has progressed as the season has gone on over the last several seasons, and Arvin sees that being the case once again if they can correct its mistakes from Thursday.
“If you look at every single one of the teams I’ve been involved in, we’ve always been better at the end of the year. We won’t completely go back to the drawing board, but we’re going to have to get some different things coached up if we want to continue that trend,” said Arvin.