McClain falls to Logan Elm

The McClain boys varsity soccer team lost to a very physical and experienced Logan Elm squad, 6-2 Monday night on McClain Field in Greenfield.

The Tigers, who are a very young and inexperienced team, gave the Braves all they wanted over the first 40 minutes of play and trailed just 1-0 at the half.

McClain quickly tied the contest at the beginning of the second period on a goal by junior Creed Davis, but Logan Elm answered moments later with a score at the beginning of second half and regained the lead 2-1.  Shortly after giving up the go-ahead goal, Davis was injured and had to leave the game with 33:48 still remaining in regulation.

Logan Elm took advantage of the McClain captains’ loss and added back-to-back goals in a two-minute span and extended their lead to 4-1 with 29 minutes left to play.

The Tigers inched a little closer at the 15:36 mark of the second half on an unassisted goal by Davis, who had just returned to the playing field moments earlier.

But the Braves showed their experience over the last 15 minutes of the contest scoring, three goals, the last coming with only 27 seconds left, and held on for the hard-earned 6-2 non-conference victory over a really young but extremely scrappy McClain team.

After the game, Tigers first-year head coach John Gill, despite disappointed with the loss, still found a lot of good things to say about his young squad’s performance.

“There’s a lot of positive we can take from this game, especially from our back line, who defensively I thought was rock-solid despite giving up those six goals,” Gill said. “I know that sounds funny, but it was higher up the field that we were allowing them scoring opportunities to happen, and they also scored twice on goal kicks. That’s not acceptable and something we definitely need to work on.

“This was a very physical game, and they seemed to get into our kids’ heads a little as the game went on. A big part of what’s going on right now is that we are a really young team with lots of freshmen and a couple of boys that have never played soccer before, so we are still learning on the fly.”

McClain (1-1) travels to Zane Trace on Thursday before returning home Saturday to play Peebles with a 2 p.m. start.

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