FA MOVES ON TO THE SEMIS; ‘CATS PLAY JVC AT SATURDAY AT NOON
Nathan Epp, head coach of the soccer team at Freeman Academy, stood before his players at halftime of their quarterfinal playoff match against West Central late Tuesday afternoon and, as coaches do, offered a motivational observation.
Epp told the team he like what he had seen — aggressive, lateral play that had the Bobcats sitting with a 3-0 lead — but noticed a lack of focus in the final 15 minutes of the half in which the players weren’t communicating well and passing with inefficiency.
They were tired, he acknowledged, “but that’s the mental toughness part we’ve been talking about.”
And the coach reminded the players that this moment — this chance to play and advance in the postseason — is what the past few months have been all about.
“You have worked so hard all season for this game, for this (last) 40 minutes, to let it slip away,” Epp said. “We can’t play another 40 minutes that way and expect to win.”
The Bobcats didn’t.
And win they did.
Freeman Academy matched its three goals in the first half with another three in the second, and the defense held the Trojans scoreless in what ended up being a 6-0 home playoff victory on Oct. 8. The win moves the team into the semifinal round Saturday in Huron, where the third-seed Bobcats will face second-seed James Valley Christian, setting up a rivalry game the likes of which go back to the 1980s. The game is set to start at noon.
FA goes into Saturday’s game with an 8-3-3 record while the Vikings — which defeated St. Thomas More 3-1 in their playoff game on Tuesday — stands at 11-4-0.
On the other side of the Class A bracket, No. 1 Vermillion (8-2-1) faces No. 5 Belle Fourche (8-6-0), also on Saturday.
“The big thing the next couple of days will be to clean up a couple of things — work on some team positioning,” Epp says of his team’s preparation for James Valley, a team the Bobcats faced twice during the regular season, losing 3-1 on Sept. 6 and 5-1 on Sept. 17. “And just tell them, those last games don’t matter. Mentally, that’s a challenge with a young team, but if we play our soccer, we can play with them. We can beat them.”
Against West Central on Tuesday, Freeman Academy didn’t take long to put a goal on the board thanks to the foot of Justin Escobar, who found the net in the eighth minute of play to give his team a 1-0 lead. Escobar, a sophomore at Marion, would score again later in the match, and Freeman Public freshman Lesther Rocha scored the team’s four other goals, bringing his season total to 31, which Epp calls “incredible.”
Assists in the match came from FA junior David Ilunga, two from Escobar, another from Freeman Public freshman Persie Avila and from Parker sophomore Emma Tuschen.
All of it added up to a solid effort when it mattered most.
“There have been times this year where we looked sloppy, but today, other than those 15 minutes at the end of the first half, they played a solid game,” said Epp, who is assisted by Andre Eisenbeis, Paul Ortman and Liam Ortman. “They pressed well as a team, our passing was solid, and we counter-attacked at the right times.
“I’m really proud of them.”
And Epp — who has worked with the FA soccer program in the past but is in his first year as head coach — says he’s having fun watching this great group play.
“I’m happy we have a team that plays the kind of soccer I enjoy, and that’s possessing, that’s making the appropriate runs, and defense,” he says. “We now have two clean sheets in the last three games; to shut two teams out at the end of the season, that shows how far we’ve come.”
