After the home opener was cancelled Monday night (no referees), the Mooresville men’s soccer team finally made their home debut vs Hough Tuesday night.
It also began the debut for a new coaching staff including head coach Paul Kikta and assistant Susan Hudson. New is a word that is tough to use here simply because they bring a combined experience of 40 plus years in soccer and coaching. The mood around the team this season is amazing. Everyone is very excited, and they are picking up where they left off in January. The staff itself is very vocal and engaged in the team and it is obvious they are building a program for the future.
Bring in Hough, always a top team year after year and a nemesis for Mooresville. This was one physical matchup and things did not go Mooresville’s way in the end. There were more elbows to the back then a Saturday night UFC fight in Las Vegas. At one point, it appeared it was simply fair game to make contact in the back at will, setting the tone for the remainder of the evening. Mooresville wasn’t having any of it, fought back hard, and did hold their ground strong.
This is a good sign that the future of Mooresville soccer is headed in the right direction early in the season.
“Although it was a loss on the scoreboard the new pieces that have been added to the puzzle, are beginning to find where they fit.” mentioned assistant coach Susan Hudson.
This was clear right when the match began. Although the Hough team was larger in size, most of the game was a hard-fought battle at midfield. Hough games of the past generally had Mooresville spending a higher percentage of time on defense. Returning senior Ryan Amstutz, juniors Mason Stone, Rafa Bonamigo-Valls and newcomer sophomore Greg Heckle stepped up and played very well against a tough Hough offense. Amstutz began making his presence known early and often against the Hough Huskies (shown in photo) business as usual for him having the most experience against Hough.
Senior goalkeeper Ben Burger came up big to keep the devils in the game all night. Burger was amazing in goal, both Hough goals were what one may describe as easy due to Mooresville errors. Not to disrespect Hough in any way but they were simple mistakes by Mooresville that would normally not happen. One came down to a fluke on a header where a Mooresville player was simply out of position by a few steps and an errant header (shown in photo).
Mason Stone played his heart out all night and was all over the field. It was great to see Greg Heckle not be intimated a bit by the Senior Hough attacking offense late in the game with a big steal. These are all great signs that the Mooresville program is headed in the right direction already.
Mooresville worked through injuries in the offense to put together some chances with Liam Myatt, Leo Ontiveros, Tanner Small, and Ivan Quientero.
Very late in the game a phenomenal play took place setting up a big scoring chance for Mooresville. It couldn’t have been played out any more perfect… often called the coach’s dream, but it came up short. In time, these student athletes will figure it out and plays like this will be happening a lot.
To sum it all up we can confidently say this is one of those teams, that in two weeks, will not make these kinds of mistakes. The players have bought in to the system and are quite talented. Temperatures were once again in the high 90’s and definitely 100+ on the field. Cramping was an issue all evening on both sides of the ball and is expected to continue all week.
The Mooresville Blue Devils have 2 more home matches this week. Come out and watch the team in action!
*Special thanks to the MHS soccer team for contributions to this story
