Boys Soccer: Varsity boys pre-season victory against Cupertino HS

Becca Zheng • December 6, 2016

big-one — Sophomore Soham Mukherjee attempts to steal a ball from a Cupertino HS player in the team’s first game of the season. Photo by Becca Zheng.

The rain was quickly subsiding as the MVHS boys soccer team took to the field in their first preseason game on Nov. 30. The clouds remained heavy over the field throughout the game, but the team seemed unaffected by the weather and focused on their goal: winning their first game of the season. In many ways, MVHS proved their potential as a team as they defeated rivals Cupertino HS 2-1.

The first game of the season is usually an opportunity to try new formations and start new players. But MVHS started slow and struggled with defense early on. CHS took an early lead, slicing through the miscommunication of the MVHS defense to score their first goal nine minutes into the game.

“It’s always good to see what your team is like when they’re down,” Head coach Patrick Lowney said. “[We] kinda stuck with it, which was nice, since [we] had a lot of time to get it back.”

31452492715_09785fae17_k — Senior Nikash Narula takes the ball across the field. He ended up scoring both of MVHS’ goals in their 2-1 victory. Photo by Becca Zheng.

But MVHS was quick to regroup, with senior captain Nikash Narula scoring MVHS’ first goal only two minutes later. From that point on, MVHS was dominant, attempting multiple shots on CHS’ goal with different players and with a few shots slightly off target.

“As the game progressed on, [we] started to follow our tactics and our formations, and at the end [we] had good results coming out,” junior Songjun Na said, “I’m really proud of my team for that, and for myself.”

After the eventful starting 11 minutes, the rest of the first half was scoreless .The half closed out with the score tied at 1-1. Transitioning into the second half of the game, the ball stayed primarily on the CHS half of the field. Despite the overall score remaining at a tie, numerous shots were attempted on the CHS goalie.

30644338983_d68402073a_k — MVHS defends the ball against one of Cupertino HS’ early possessions in the game. Photo by Akshara Majjiga.

“Second half [we] were pressing a lot, and [we] were mostly in their half, and [we were] able to get a lot more shots,” Narula said. “Our keeper didn’t really have to touch the ball [the] second half, except a couple [of] times.”

While the rest of the game was fairly mellow with MVHS retaining possession for much of the remainder of the game, the last 15 minutes of the game resulted in another goal made by Narula, ultimately leading to a final score of 2-1 in favor of MVHS.

“I would go back to the fact that [we] were down, and [we] fought back, and [just] kept [on] playing the way we were playing, because we felt like we were playing well enough,” Lowney said. “[But] I think they were all pretty confident that [we] were gonna get a goal or two, and get the result that we wanted.”