Starting off the season strong with a 3-0 consecutive win streak, the Rangeview Raiders lost to the Overland Trail Blazers on September 7th, 2023. The Raiders ultimately faced their first strong competitors this season.
Most held their heads high, knowing it was just one small setback for the team. They communicated, they fought, but it was just not enough to get a goal on the scoreboard. Their defense wasn’t as strong as other games.
Senior Jonathan Garica believes the team entered the game “overly confident”, from thinking they had the game in the bag since warm-ups. Focusing more on the game on Saturday rather than the game at hand. Offensively they had some mishaps, they were open for multiple goals but they didn’t take them.
Garcia believes that when the team had the ball they were too predictable, not taking the chances they had.
Junior David Lopez was in shot for goal, head to head, one on one with the Trail Blazers goalkeeper. He shot straight at him, not searching for an open spot at the net.
Garica also had an opportunity to score a goal but unfortunately, decided to look for an assist causing him to lose the ball.
The first half of the game was a disaster, lights out in the heads of the players. They didn’t wake up until the second half but this was no longer a game to come back on.
Early on the start of the game, Overland was met with an opportunity to score off a rebound of a free kick. Rangeview was caught in the dust by not following their man, allowing the opportunity for Overland to score, the game rests at 0-1.
Another mistake made by the Raiders was when Senior Anthony Hernandez unfortunately let the ball bounce behind him allowing another Overland player to gain possession of the ball leading them to have a 0-2 lead.
The defense was once again caught close-eyed as Overland found space against the Raiders keeper to score making the score 0-3. Rangeview had no more opportunities to score after the half, but that didn’t stop them from bringing in a different level of aggression to not allow Overland to change the score even further.
Senior Ivan Hernandez states that this loss was “disappointing” and agrees with his brother Anthony Hernandez “ that they weren’t in it.” but Anthony Hernandez assures us that they “will come back, having bigger games ahead of them.”
Senior Abubakar Abdi says that taking the two weeks off hurt them, they weren’t coming prepared for this game. They weren’t consecutively bringing the aggression that they needed in order to dominate the Trail Blazers as they have done in the past with other schools.
The Rangeview soccer team as a whole agrees with understanding that the game did not have any individual errors, but it was errors as a whole.
This week was just a difficult setback for the Raiders in coming back from two weeks of no home or away games. It could be a factor of how the team played on Thursday. However, they are looking forward to the rest of the season and what it holds.
