On Friday, February 4th, the Columbus High Varsity Men’s Soccer team pulled off one of the greatest wins, defeating McIntosh High School.
The CHS Blue Devils played well last year and made it to the Elite 8 4- AAAA State Tournament.
The Devils suffered a 2-5 loss against the McIntosh Chiefs last season. However, the team put in a great deal of effort and hard work preparing for the rematch against the Chiefs Friday night.
Although the team had never won against McIntosh in the past, the CHS players all play club soccer at a very high level, so the team was familiar with playing against tough competitors.
“McIntosh is the current 5A State Champion, currently ranked #6 in the nation and was ranked #1 for the majority of last season, so while we were not intimidated, we definitely had lots of respect for them,” remarked Coach Torres.
Since the team is an already motivated group, the main focus for the team was preparing the game plan and executing it perfectly.
At 8 pm on Friday night, the Columbus High student body filed into the bleachers at Kinnett stadium to support the boy's soccer team.
“The support from the [student body] was awesome and there were a lot of people,” stated Jacob Entlich.
In the first half of the game, CHS was down 1-0, but the team had created chances and was doing well neutralizing McIntosh’s threats.
“During half time, my objective was simply to put the players at ease so that they could come back out and do more of the same,” comments Coach Torres.
Many on the team stated that the most important part of the game was simply scoring. Overall, the team scoring gave them hope that they could pull through and win the game.
Columbus High players, Jace Cecalupo, Thomas Partridge, Micheal Woods,
and Dante Johnson all took penalties to win the team the shootout, 4-2.
“The fan support and belief that we would win was a huge factor in the team winning [against McIntosh],” stated Entlich.