By EMMA NORMAN – The crowd is on their feet! He takes his shot…he scores! IHS boys soccer team made it all the way to playoffs this season. With a record of 11-7 overall, the boys qualified for the playoffs for the 2018 season. The boys went up against Ringold, and although they lost 4-0, the team is proud of their outstanding accomplishments.

In order to make it to the playoffs, the boys had to win one of three possible games. At the boy’s senior salute night they did just that, which qualified them for playoffs. Senior Evan Ray was excited about the team’s accomplishment. He stated, “We had to win one of the three games to make it and we did. I was excited because we lost a lot of good seniors last year but we still did well.”

Despite the team’s loss at the playoff game, the boys are still proud of how far they’ve come this season and are optimistic about next season.

Junior Simon Bianco was beaming with pride for his team. He stated, “Although the outcome wasn’t what we wanted, the score doesn’t show how close the game really was. Our team has a lot to look forward to next year. We have a great base of experienced players along with a promising group of future players. We were relatively young this year, so I can’t wait to see how it all comes together next year. I’m really proud of this group we had this year because we faced more challenges than anyone else. We were the underdogs the whole year, losing an amazing group of seniors last season, this year was full of fighting.”

The team’s defensive line last year was comprised almost entirely of seniors. This meant that this year required a lot of training and hard work to make sure the team’s defense was just as, if not stronger, than last year’s.

Sophomore Jason Zheng spoke about the team’s struggles this year, and how they were able to overcome their obstacles, “I felt that our team overcame many challenges this season.  With this season, we lost our defense from the previous year. They were all seniors who graduated. This means that we had to step up and create a defensive line that could do as well as the previous year.  This was the biggest challenge this year. We did overcome this problem, but fell short because it was new to the team.”

The boy’s soccer team has much to be proud of for their accomplishments this season,  and everyone is looking forward to seeing them reach for their goals again next year.

[Photo by Aiden Murdick]

Photo Caption: “Senior Evan Ray works the ball down the field.”