Overwhelmed by the strength of their opponents and set back by the considerable number of game cancellations, the Middle School boys A soccer team happily finished the fall season with a satisfactory 3-3-1 record. Even better was the fact that the team was undefeated in games that Head Coach Andy Krugman considered to be competitive.
Coach Krugman praised his team. “This group just did not give up,” he said. He noted that even though the Hopkins School team was very talented, the KO team kept fighting throughout the game.
“At the start [of the season], we were a decent team,” eighth-grader midfielder Ethan Leshem said. “Developing is an important part of the team and we did that well.” Leshem said that some of the team’s focuses in practice were defending and communication.
At the beginning of the season, one of the team’s goals was to improve ball control. “[The team worked on] being able to trap and pass and maintain control while always still looking to attack,” Coach Krugman said. “Good teams can do both; they can trap and pass and move.”
Regarding the team’s highlights this season, Leshem mentioned a game where sixth-grader striker Patrick O’Shaughnessy scored two goals. Further describing the season’s highlights, Coach Krugman described a really exciting game against the Renbrook school on their sports day, which the Wyverns won 3-2.
Coach Krugman said that the team played a hard-fought game against Hopkins. “We played Hopkins who was significantly better than us,” he said. “They were bigger and more experienced and even though we lost 6-1, we were only down 1-0 at the half.” Coach Krugman said that KO had a promising start to the second half. “We tied it actually early in the second half so really almost 40 minutes into the game it was 1-1 so we hung in there for a long time,” he said.
However, the rest of the game didn’t go as well as he had hoped. “The dam burst and they scored a couple of quick goals and then next thing you know 3-1 turned to 4-1 turned to 5-1 and eventually we lost 6-1 and I don’t think we played badly,” Coach Krugman said. “They were just much better.”
When asked about the team’s most valuable player, Coach Krugman said that he didn’t have any. However, he did mention that he asked a lot of eighth-grader midfielder Ignacio Feged. Leshem said he enjoyed playing soccer-golf and scrimmaging during practices. He hopes to bring the skill of communicating with teammates with him as he moves on to the high school.
