MORGANTOWN — On a night where the University High School boys’ soccer team was celebrating its nine seniors, the Hawks continued to struggle with finding their footing on Tuesday.
“There’s a lot of talent there with this senior class,” UHS head coach Michael Smith said. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm, everybody wants to win, everybody wants the team to do well. I think in a weird sense they are still trying to figure out how to be leaders.”
The Hawks (7-6-1) held senior night and dropped a 3-0 decision to visiting Mountain Ridge High School.
All nine seniors started for UHS and Smith said he still thinks this group of players is going to figure things out this season. The nine seniors are Brady Grubb, Pierre Kpegba, Kevin Hernandez, Anthony Gonzalez, Nickita Aytak, Joshua Espinoza, Brock Shuba, Nathaniel Lindsay, and Wesley DeLeurere.
“You see some things behind the scenes that are starting to click with them,” Smith said. “There’s a little more ownership. When we get this right, they’re going to lead this team to some good things.”
This group of seniors has weathered some tough times on the pitch. As freshmen, the Hawks went 5-13-2 and then finished with another losing record in 2022 at 9-11-3 before finishing 12-9-1 last season.
“We are really still trying to find our place,” four-year varsity player Grubb said. “We still aren’t the team we want to be. We want to build an offense from the back and score a team goal — we haven’t done that yet but it’s getting close.”
Grubb said the Hawks still struggle with focus before and during a game and it manifests in games like the loss on Tuesday to the Miners (8-0).
“I think that is one of our biggest problems, just not being like, fully locked in before games,” Grubb said. “I feel like at the end of the game, we get locked in but we need to start better.”
On Tuesday, the Hawks started slow once again as the Miners jumped out to a 2-0 first-half lead with goals from Charlie Simpson and Eli Cooper. Mountain Ridge got one more goal from Trenton Diamond in the second half.
University finished with nine shots in the contest while the Miners added 16. Finn Worstoff had seven saves for UHS while James DeCarlo had eight for Mountain Ridge.
The Hawks return to action on Thursday when they travel to Steubenville for a 5 p.m. contest.
— Story BY ERIC HERTER
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