The Kent-Meridian Royals boys soccer fell to the Thomas Jefferson Raiders 1-0 at Federal Way High School on April 12.<\/p>\n
“I think we dominated in possession and had the opportunities. But at the end of the day, you gotta put the ball in the net,” said Head Coach Brian Gabert.<\/p>\n
So far this season, the Royals just haven’t been able to get on the right track. Kent-Meridian looked to be on the right path after taking down Auburn in their previous game 4-1.<\/p>\n
The game against Thomas Jefferson is one that got away from the Royals.<\/p>\n
“The blame is on us. We gotta score goals and that’s all there is to it,” Gabert said.<\/p>\n
Despite the Raiders grabbing early momentum in the first five minutes of play, the Royals took control for the majority first half.<\/p>\n
Most of this game was played in the midfield, and occasionally the Royals threatened Thomas Jefferson’s back line, but there were never opportunities to take advantage of.<\/p>\n
Going into halftime, the game was deadlocked 0-0, which Kent-Meridian left on the doorstep of Thomas Jefferson’s goal.<\/p>\n
In the 69th minute after a Royal handball, the Raiders had their best opportunity of the whole game.<\/p>\n
The shot hit off the post and was sent in by Thomas Jefferson, and the Royals’ dominant performance was all for naught.<\/p>\n
During the last 11 minutes after conceding the goal, Kent-Meridian continued to apply pressure, but couldn’t crack the code.<\/p>\n
“We just have to come back better next game,” said sophomore Irving Baca-Silva.<\/p>\n
The Royals left Federal Way wondering how this game got away from them.<\/p>\n
“We’re just gonna keep working,” Gabert said.<\/p>\n
Baca-Silva echoed the same message as his coach: “We just have to work harder at practice,” he said.<\/p>\n
Kent-Meridian now sits in third place in the standings, trailing Thomas Jefferson by 4 points. Despite being in third place, the Royals averaged more goals a game than the two teams in front of them. That helps Gabert trust in his team. <\/ins><\/p>\n “I believe in my players, it’s going to keep coming,” Gabert said.<\/ins><\/p>\n The coach told his team early on that it was going to be a hard season.<\/p>\n “I told them at the beginning of the year we’re gonna suffer. There are going to be games that we lost that you should win,” he said.<\/p>\n Going into the last four games of their season, they take on two winless teams, but have Auburn Mountainview (4-6-2) and first place Auburn Riverside (5-2-4) to end the regular season. Last season, the Royals rattled off five wins in a row, and this year they hope to do a similar feat to end the season.<\/p>\n “It comes down to the next four games. If we can get some momentum going into the playoffs, I think we’ll be okay,” said Coach Gabert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Game that the Royals felt they dominated ended up not going their way. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1142,"featured_media":62438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-62437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62437"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=62437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}