By Dinos Simcox
The Mustangs girls soccer team was unable to come away with a victory against the James Wood Colonels, losing 2-0. The loss was unfortunately timed, coming on the club’s senior night. The Mustangs’ record drops to 6-5-1 with multiple strong opponents upcoming.
While the Mustangs’ offense was unable to gain any traction, the Mustangs’ defense was on point nearly the entire game. Sophomore Baelyn Reinfurt made several impressive saves, only letting in goals on James Wood breakaways. James Wood was held scoreless for the entirety of the second half, notching both their goals fairly early in the first half.
Despite a difficult showing, the Mustangs never showed any signs of frustration or laziness. The team continued to press the attack and get quality shots on goal all the way until the final whistle.
“One of the things we work on is persistence, and never giving up. Our theme for the season is ‘make it matter,’ so we talk about every minute of the 80 minutes…so even if the result of this game isn’t what we want, we want to make sure that this game prepares us for the next one,” head coach Leah Partridge commented.
Meridian’s regular season is only getting harder from here, with their next two teams boasting very strong records. Their next opponent, Maggie L. Walker, is 7-2-1, while the Mustangs’ next opponent after that is the undefeated Kettle Run, sitting at 9-0.
“[We always look at] what we can do to make the next game a better game for us, and prepare us to be resilient in the face of challenging teams,” coach Partridge explained.
While their schedule continues to be daunting, the Mustangs do everything they can to learn from their mistakes and continue to improve their game.
“We try to pick one thing that we can work on to make improvements, especially if it’s something involving the whole team. We’re never gonna call out a specific player. We do celebrate the wins, the players who’ve done really well. Each game we have a most valuable contributor, someone who contributed all over the field to the team. So we make sure we recognize that, and we pick one or two skills to work on going forward,” coach Partridge said.
The Mustangs next game, as mentioned, is against Maggie L. Walker. They will host the Green Dragons on May 1st at 7:15 PM.
