Lake Oswego boys soccer ties Ida B. Wells 1-1

The LO boys soccer team leads by a goal until the Guardians score late

This one left a bad taste in the Lakers’ mouths.

The Lake Oswego boys soccer team led Ida B. Wells by a goal late in their Tuesday, Sept. 20, contest at Lake Oswego High School, that after holding the upper hand in possession and chances throughout the game.

But Wells got the game-tying goal with 5 minutes, 37 seconds left on the clock and escaped with a 1-1 tie at LOHS.

“We came out and we were all over them,” said Lake Oswego senior defender and team captain Adam Robertson. “We were the ones who wanted to go out and win the game. We were the ones that were taking it to them, but that kind of switched at the end of second half.”

“I’d say we had even more possession and control in the second half,” added LO senior defender and team captain Luc Scipio del Campo, who scored his team’s lone goal against Wells. “It’s really just a mentality thing, I think. I think we switched off for 5 or 10 minutes and we got scored on and that’s the nature of the game sometimes.”

With the loss, the Lakers — unranked in the latest Class 6A coaches poll — saw their two-game winning streak snapped and fell to 3-2-1 overall. Wells, also unranked, saw its winless streak grow to three games and its record move to 1-2-3 overall. Next up, the Lakers will play top-ranked Lincoln (6-0-0 overall) at Buckman Field (300 N.E. 12th Ave. in Northeast Portland) at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22.

In their Tuesday game, the Lakers started fast, played well and controlled possession during the first half, eventually pushing ahead 1-0 on Scipio del Campo’s goal. Junior defender Max Reckerman started the scoring play when he sent a corner kick into the Guardians’ penalty box and Scipio del Campo ran onto the ball at the far post and headed it home for a one-goal lead.

“Max played it in from the corner and I was just unmarked at the back post and I got a free header and it went in,” Scipio del Campo said.

And there, at 1-0, was where the score stayed for a very, very long time. It was 1-0 for the Lakers at halftime. It was still 1-0 LO midway through the second half. And it was 1-0 for Lake Oswego well inside the game’s final 10 minutes.

But it didn’t stay that way. With 5:37 left to play, Wells sent a long ball up the left sideline to junior forward Evan Motsko. Motsko turned up the endline, beat one LO defender and hit an angled rocket that flew past Laker senior goalkeeper Hayes Donaldson, ricocheted off the right post into the back of the net to tie the game at 1-1.

The Lakers tried to rally in the game’s final five minutes, getting a 15-yard shot that missed high from junior Evan Huber with 4:45 remaining, a fruitless corner kick from the right side by Reckerman with three minutes left, and finally, two long free kicks by Donaldson in the game’s final 30 seconds that failed to produce a shot.

“It’s a game of inches, right? Which means it’s also a game of little things,” Robertson said. “You can do everything right except one little thing, so we have to go into the next game, the next practice thinking ‘Now we have to focus on this one thing.’ We have to do it better.”

“I think if we take that (attention to detail) into our next game, we’ll win that game and we’ll change things and we’ll get into the playoffs,” Scipio del Campo added.

You can see the complete slideshow from this game by clicking here.

To see even more images of the LO boys soccer team, or to buy prints or digital downloads from this game, go to milesvance.smugmug.com.