Back-to-back victories eluding Chieftain soccer
His squad armed with a 4-4 record, Tonganoxie High girls soccer coach Ken Lott knows he can’t be too disappointed in how the season has transpired thus far in the Chieftains’ first eight games of existence as a varsity program.
Then again, the win-one, lose-one trend fosters a .500 record, which Lott would like to see fall by the wayside and turn into a winning streak as soon as possible.
The latest example of the consistently inconsistent pattern came Thursday night as Tonganoxie fell, 3-1, to Kansas City Christian at Chieftain Park.
“It’s a team I felt we should have beat,” said Lott, refusing to play the happy-to-be-here card in the wake of his team’s setback.
“Because we’re a first-year team, we’re trying to find our level — our happy level. We don’t do it from week to week, but we’re trying to get there.”
Last week, it was Kansas City Christian that found a happy place on the Chieftains’ home field, scoring twice in the first half and taking a 2-0 lead it would never relinquish.
Tonganoxie cut into the deficit on a goal by sophomore forward Addy Phelps early in the second half, but couldn’t mount any sustainable offense while allowing the Panthers to tickle the twine once more for the final margin.
“We had a hard time getting the ball up to our forwards consistently,” Lott said.
Despite the most recent shortcoming, Lott admits he’s pleased on two specific fronts.
The first comes with the actual soccer talent flowing through the Tonganoxie pipeline.
“I’m pretty happy with what I’ve seen, and the potential that we have,” said Lott, whose team returns to action tonight at Maranatha Academy in Shawnee. Varsity plays at 4 p.m. and junior varsity at 5:30 p.m. “Just putting it together is probably the hardest thing that we’re going to have, but hopefully by the end of the year we’re going to be able to get it to that point.”
The second is the manner in which the community has embraced the infant program, from the 40-plus girls who came out for the team to the crowds that turn out on game nights.
“I’m appreciative for all the fans that have been coming out and appreciating what girls soccer is and can be in the Tonganoxie area,” Lott said.
The Chieftains will be back home Monday when they face Lansing. Junior varsity will play at 4:30 p.m. and varsity at 6 p.m. at Chieftain Park.