The Corvallis boys’ soccer team is a hardworking, “blue collar” team, according to their coach, Tim Hickey. The team has struggled the last three years but this year, they went from ‘”worst to first,” according to Hickey.
“I’ve coached them since they were little, in youth soccer, and so last year, as freshmen, that’s the first year I hadn’t coached them for a long time and so it was kind of depressing watching them.”
He said the last two years saw only a couple of wins for the team and he wanted to help turn that around. With only four seniors on the team, the Blue Devils are a young team and they all bought into the idea of working hard to turn things around. Hickey said there really isn’t a star on the team.
“They are just kind of blue collar. They work, they do all their jobs and they always play hard.”
The Blue Devils were sitting in first place until a couple of weeks ago when they hit a slump and lost two conference games; a tough match against Hamilton and another against Frenchtown. The team turned things around and defeated Hamilton, 3-0, on Thursday. The win came at a loss, however. Mason Wiggins, a junior captain, broke his leg in that match.
Hickey said, “You all kind of step in for each other. We’ve had very few times this year where we’ve had all our starters in, they all cover for each other very well.”
Hickey went on to say that the team has treated every game like it was a playoff game, concentrating on that game only and executing to the best of their ability. He feels this will help the team this Saturday when they host the first round playoff game against the winner of the Billings Centra/Park County game that was played on Monday. Corvallis enters the playoffs as the No. 2 seed from the South behind Frenchtown. The boys will play in Corvallis at noon on Saturday, October 19.
Corvallis shut out Frenchtown on Saturday, 1-0. Their lone goal was on a penalty kick by Chris Gonzales. Corvallis stayed aggressive throughout the game and held Frenchtown on their own side of the field for much of the second half. It looked as if Corvallis would add to their score at the eight minute mark when they were awarded a corner kick, and then another, and then two more. Each time, Frenchtown cleared the ball and kept them from scoring. Frenchtown was pushing as time ran out but Corvallis cleared the ball one last time for the win.
Hickey gave a lot of credit to his goal keeper, Hunter Linnewah. He said there is so much pressure on keepers to stay aware and be ready at any time. But Linnewah rose to the occasion and kept Frenchtown scoreless.
“I told the boys, you just got to go play and win every game, that’s what we can control.”
That, and their blue collar work ethic.
Stevensville and Hamilton played to a 2-2 tie in another game that had playoff implications. With the tie, Stevensville finished as the No. 3 seed from the South and will advance to the first round of the playoffs. Their game will be in Whitefish against the No. 1 team in the state. That game will be on Saturday.
Stevensville scored first in the match on Saturday against Hamilton when Chance Lester took an assist from Oliver Post at the 29 minute mark for the goal. Stevi scored just five minutes later when Carlos Morales hit the net with a direct kick.
Hamilton scored both their goals in the second half. Aryton Duncan scored at 65 minutes and then Kyle Guisinger scored at 69 minutes. Hamilton’s Chance Schmitt had three saves with Stevensville taking 12 shots on goal. Ben Schreiber of Stevensville had 15 saves and Hamilton took 17 shots on goal.