At the Indian River turf field on Sunday October 27th the Morgan Huskies Faced the Old Saybrook rams in the semi final shoreline game after receiving a bye in the first round. The Huskies lost 2-3 despite incredible efforts from Backup Goalie Hayden Darr.
The Morgan boys soccer team received a bye in the first round of the shoreline conference tournament after having a very impressive record of 11-1-4 in the regular season, only taking a loss to Stonington on 10/5. The boys were set up to play 11-3-2 Old Saybrook under the lights of the turf in the semi-finals of the shoreline conference tournament.
The team faced a major challenge in the conference match-up, as starting goalie, Liam Totten received a red card in the final game of the regular season against the Haddam-Killingworth Cougars. When a player receives a red card in a high school soccer game that player is no longer eligible to play in the next game. Unfortunately for the Huskies, that means Liam, who has started for 3 years, would not be available to play against Old Saybrook in the Semi Final.
The red card came as a surprise to many during the HK game. “I was on the other side of the field, I was watching as a player from HK ran down the field with the ball charging at the goal. Liam came out aggressively and jumped three feet in the air, spun around with his cleats facing the kid charging at him, and he hit his head and went down. Obviously it wasn’t on purpose, Liam was trying to block the ball without hurting himself,” said sophomore Esteban Orozco.”It was an aggressive play though, and we understood why the refs gave him a red card,” Orozco reflected.
Despite the loss of Totten, the Huskies were ready to compete with Old Saybrook. Backup goalie, Hayden Darr received playing time against HK in the last game following the red card. There, the Huskies impressively pulled off a tie against a strong HK team who had 11 wins on the season.
Going into the Old Saybrook game, the team had full confidence in Darr, but in order to help him out, a Coach Ross altered the formation,putting a fifth defender in the back row in order to help the defense hang with the aggressive Old Saybrook team. In the semi-final game, Darr had an incredible first half, only letting in one goal after the many shots attempted on him including two saves that required Darr to come out of goal and slide tackle the ball out from under Old Saybrooks offense.
“The only goal I let in was the first one shot on me,” said Darr,” That was really good for me though. After that first shot, I was able to relax in a weird way. I knew what it felt like to be scored on, and I didn’t want to let that happen again. It’s hard to remember the rest of that half, though. I was so dialed in, I was just trying to focus on what was happening right at the moment.”
The second half started off really well for the Huskies as well. Darr was making some great saves and the Huskies scored two goals right away, putting them up 2-1 after being down 1-0 at halftime.
Unfortunately for the Huskies, about halfway through the second half, Old Saybrook made two incredible goals on Darr in the matter of a few minutes which completely flipped the energy of the whole game. Old Saybrook was able to ride that energy for the remaining time of the second half and take down the Huskies.
Even though the Huskies lost, they put up an incredible fight against a very well put together Rams team. The huskies season also is not quite over yet. The boys have managed to grab the #4 seed in the state tournament and will be looking to make a run to the finals this year. Their first game will be during the first week in November and it will be home on the Indian RIver turf field.
