Westerville South’s High School Varsity Boys’ Soccer team has had an interesting season so far, coming up short against two big rival schools, North and Central. 

Heading into their mid-season, the overall win to loss ratio stood at 3-4. They started off the season with a 0-3 loss in an away game against Westerville Central on Aug. 16. 

Joel Cheruyiot, senior, said, “It was the first game of the season and I don’t think we gelled well together. I feel like we were outplayed the whole game; we didn’t play terribly, but three kinds of mistakes cost us the game.”

Following the season opener, the boys brought home two wins in back to back home games  against Lancaster and Newark, scoring 3-0 and 3-1 respectively. 

“They were, I guess, easier teams, but we didn’t play up to the level we wanted to, and it’s showing now as the team goes up against better teams like North and Central,”Cheruyiot said.

On Tuesday, Sep. 10, the Wildcats went head to head against rival school, Westerville North, in their most awaited game and South’s players went into the game with high expectations of taking the victory.

 “My goal is that we come out hot, and we get a goal in the first five minutes and beat North,” Giovanni Borghese, junior, said. 

Other senior players wanted to triumph against North because it would be their last year playing, but the Wildcats were unsuccessful in breaking out of their rough patch. They took a 0-2 loss against the Warriors, which dropped their record from 3-4 to 3-5. 

This loss secured their third losing streak at home. The players were disappointed with their shortcomings at the game.

 “I thought that we would win…I thought we could win; we could’ve won; it’s just that things didn’t align for us like we wanted it to,” Cheruyiot said.  

All Wildcats hoped to secure a win, but as Paul Turay, freshman, said, “… I’m just going to learn from it because I’m going to be here for the next four years.”

Some players admit they struggled at the beginning of the season due to the fact that this is their first year playing officially on the varsity team. There are 18 varsity players on the roster this year, 6 being returning varsity players and 12 being completely new to playing on a higher level. 

Cheruyiot said, “It’s a big jump from JV to varsity and getting used to playing against good teams that are actually varsity level has been tough.”

“It’s definitely a step up to play on Varsity, it’s tough  and you have to adapt to it,” added Liam Schlagbaum, senior, who is playing on varsity for the second year.

The biggest game so far for the players has been the Pickerington Central game. Cheruyiot said,  “The highlight of the season so far is when we lost to Pick Central, 4-1.  Pick Central scored two unlucky goals at the end of the game,  but we played the best game so far and it was very memorable.”