By Noah Dalton
MITCHELL – Still searching for their first win of the season, Mitchell High School drew with Owen Valley on Tuesday after scoring a late goal to even things up.
After neither team proved able to find the back of the net in the first half, the Patriots struck first early in the second, when senior Joseph Ross was able to find space near the box and fire the scoring shot into the goal.
“We got a little discombobulated in the middle and then the ball just kind of started bouncing and my keeper kind of came out, it bounced over and just kind of bounced in and it’s just one of those things, especially on a turf field, the ball bounces a lot more so that’s something we may need to work on,” said Bluejackets’ head coach Nick Karr.
After falling victim to a few offside traps set by Owen Valley, Mitchell were finally able to break free with around five minutes left to play when a through pass from Kody Earl found an open Carl Chenault who was able to beat the Patriots’ keeper, evening up the score at one.
“I’ve always said that if we want to win games, we’ve got to pass through the middle,” said Karr, the team’s first-year coach. “So we can have our players maintain their positions. That’s something we’ve talked about in the past. They’d say, ‘oh, I don’t trust my teammates’ or something like that. Holding their positions, moving the ball looking to the outside, which they did, going out and then giving that through ball to the left so Carl could score at the end their.”
With Karr being just a few games into his first season at the helm, he will look for the team to continue to build chemistry and work on their fundamentals as the season progresses.
“We’re still working as a team on some things. I’m a new coach here and guys are working on their fundamentals still and working on our teamwork and passing. What I like about this game is we passed the ball a lot better than our previous games, we kind of played what I call solo soccer, and part of that is we’ve just got to learn to trust our own teammates and they started doing that, which led to more shots on goal,” he said.
The Bluejackets (0-2-2) will step on the pitch again on Thursday, when they’ll travel to Bloomfield to take on the Cardinals (1-0).
