The Homer boys soccer team allowed three goals to Mexico’s Brennan McQuown and lost 3-2 Thursday night at Homer High School. Homer finished the regular season 5-7-2 and will be seeded for the Section III Class B Tournament next week.
McQuown’s final tally was on a penalty kick and was the game’s only goal after halftime. The penalty kick, which went in with 27:33 left in the game, was nearly stopped by Homer keeper Brayden Fox.
Despite having multiple opportunities the rest of the way, the Trojans were unable to beat Mexico keeper Elijah Spurlin. Homer head coach Chris Guay believes that was at least partially attributed to his players going for the big ball down the field too often.
“We got away from some of the things we did well all season long,” Guay said. “We were trying to kick the ball up the field. Defensively, our 1v1 defending kind of went out the window where we were stabbing at guys. Then we were just having trouble winning that second ball.”
The game went into halftime tied at two after a back-and-forth first 40 minutes. McQuown scored his first goal just 2:38 in, but Homer answered with a goal from Lance Heyer 3:25 later. Heyer followed a shot that hit off Spurlin’s hands and tapped it in to tie the game.
Homer and Mexico played a 5-4 game on Sept. 22, and with two goals just over six minutes in, it looked like another high-scoring game would take place Thursday.
“We were up by three or four goals at their place and then they came storming back,” Guay said. “The way this started off, we gave up kind of a cheap one and I was glad with the way we rebounded, but I thought we’d keep that momentum. But the longer it went, trading goals, we just couldn’t shake our funk.”
Guay thinks that funk was attributed to Thursday being senior night. The 10 seniors got a very abbreviated warmup after the girls game due to the ceremony.
“I think we were just a little bit off from the get-go and we couldn’t quite get going,” the Homer head coach said. “We had a lot of activity before the game. We didn’t have our normal warmup, we moved guys around to try to get all 10 seniors on the field. There was just a lot of things different, and probably too much different.”
Brayden Fox scored Homer’s second goal with 11:25 left in the half. He took a free kick from 37 yards out and found the back of the net.
Homer will enter sectionals riding a four-game losing streak.
