A struggling season came to a close for the North Montgomery boys’ soccer team on Monday with an IHSAA sectional loss to Tri-West.
The Class 2A No. 12 ranked Bruins defeated the Chargers 20-0 to improve to 12-2-3 on the season and will play Southmont in the semifinals at 5 p.m. on Wednesday.
Senior Daniel Havlin led Tri-West with five goals.
Despite the down season, second-year coach Tristain Hall was pleased with his teams’ effort and improvement.
“The communication got better throughout,” he said. “It’s really hard when you have a team that had played together so long last year to a team that all of them are brand new starters, except for a select few. So to get the teamwork and the communication down was a huge improvement that I saw from the beginning to now.”
That includes the work of seniors James McClerkin, Nick Sommer, Cooper Bowman, Gage Rausch, Dane Lafoe, and Caleb Cochran.
“They are workhorses, they come in every day, they are working hard and don’t really complain much,” Hall said. “It’s very easy as a senior to see some of the success we had last year to go into games and say ‘screw this, I’m done,’ but they didn’t have that mindset. They had the mindset of making everyone better.”
The shortened offseason due to COVID-19 prevented the Chargers from coming together during the summer and working on team building — something Hall hopes to do that in a normal capacity next spring and summer.
“A lot of them are freshmen and sophomores, and we will have a lot of seniors next year as well,” he said. “but the fact they’ve played together for a season I think is really going to help, and hopefully things are back to normal and we have a normal offseason and we can get that gelling together a little bit quicker.”
