Men’s soccer suffers 3-1 loss to Franklin

By Audrey Zenner,
Bluedevilhub.com Staff–

The Davis High men’s soccer team lost to Franklin High School 3-1 in a back-and-forth game on Wednesday, Sept. 23.

Before the game, junior Alex Hill predicted a difficult match.

“I expected to come out strong and put up a good fight against Franklin, yet I knew it would be hard,” Hill said.

The Wildcats started the game with a quick goal in the opening minutes of the match, which Hill said “turned our team morale down heavily.”

A little later in the first half, the Blue Devils responded by scoring off of a header from sophomore Kieran Swenson. At halftime, the score was 1-1, and it appeared that Davis had a chance to send Franklin home with a loss.

However, shortly after the second half began, a Wildcat shot again found its way to the net, bringing Franklin back into the lead. And despite the Devils’ attempts to shut down the Franklin offense, the Wildcats found a way past goalie Conner Judd once more before the game ended.

The loss provided DHS a benchmark to work from to improve future games. On Saturday, the team will face rival Jesuit High School, and head coach Alex Park saw several things his players need to work on going into the big game.

“We established a couple things, like what we need to do from this point on. Take practices a lot more seriously. Make sure that we’re not talking about anything other than soccer before the game itself,” he said. “Take one game at a time. Not get ahead of ourselves. And trusting each other, that’s a huge issue.”

Hill agrees that the team needs to focus on its mentality for the match-up with the Marauders.

“Going into the game against Jesuit, our team will most likely be working on our mindset before the game. Given DHS’ history against Jesuit, if we are not 100 percent rested and mentally prepared, we will get destroyed,” Hill said.