MUSKEGON TWP. - The Reeths-Puffer soccer team was off to a great start to the season, with five wins in six games, plus one tie.
But nobody expected the Rockets to remain without a loss once they got into their tough O-K Green conference schedule.
As it turned out, it took only one conference game for the Rockets to receive the first blemish on their record.
R-P's Owen Ritsema rips a shot.
They faced a good Jenison squad on Monday and lost 2-0 in a home game at Eric Marcil Field.
Despite running into the first defeat of the season, R-P head coach Kody Harrell is confident that his team will quickly recover and be a factor in the O-K Green championship race.
“We play too many good teams to ever make the goal to be undefeated,” the coach said. “I mean, obviously we want to win every game, but it’s about taking these moments and getting better.”
In the long run, just playing in the O-K Green will help the Rockets when the state tournament rolls around, as Harrell noted after the game.
R-P's Zach Sampson, right, battles for the ball along the sideline.
Every other team in the O-K Green is from a big Division 1 school, and most are quite good. R-P is Division 2 in soccer and plays slightly smaller schools in the postseason, so playing the big boys is a good way to toughen up.
“That’s why we’re okay with having a gauntlet of a schedule,” Harrell said. “The teams in our conference have good talent, good athleticism, and they have good depth. It’ll help us be ready at the end of the season.”
Reeths-Puffer was outshot 7-5 but had numerous opportunities to score throughout the game. The trouble was that many of those chances turned into really high shots that sailed over the Jenison goal.
“Guys who get paid millions still make mistakes,” Harrell about his team struggling to finish off scoring chances. “So, we talked about it after the game. It happens. We always preach that we don’t care about mistakes because things can be fixed. We just want to see guys apply themselves, and our guys gave effort tonight.”
R-P's London Carpenter (8) races for the ball.
In the first half, Jenison’s Andres Valladaras scored in the 14th minute of action to give the Wildcats a 1-0 lead.
That lead remained at halftime, with Jenison holding a 4-2 advantage in shots on goal.
The Rockets thought they had a great opportunity to tie the game about two minutes into the second half when one of their players was taken down in the Jenison box by a Wildcat.
That would have given R-P a penalty shot and an almost certain goal, but the referee ruled that the Rocket player committed an infraction before he was taken down, so no penalty kick occurred.
R-P's Cohen Beck (12) tries to interfere with the Jenison attack.
“I was pretty frustrated with the call,” Harrell said. “But the assistant referee explained to me that the center ref had our guy pulling the jersey before he was tripped. So I mean, I couldn’t see that and it’s impossible to argue that at that point. So it was just frustrating because we were working our butts off.”
Just two minutes later, Jenison’s Orlando Martinez found the back of the net to give Jenison a 2-0 lead.
Reeths-Puffer kept attacking in the final 36 minutes, but was unable to register a goal, with numerous shots missing the mark.
R-P, now 5–1-1 on the season, will try to even its conference record when it visits Muskegon on Wednesday.
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