MALDEN — Missed opportunities cost the No. 8 Lynn Tech boys soccer team in a 2-0 loss to No. 1 Mystic Valley in the Division 4 North quarterfinal round Tuesday night at Mystic Valley.
“We played great,” Lynn Tech coach Eric Moreno, Sr. said. “The only thing that I’m upset about is those missed chances, you have got to put them away. If you don’t finish then the other team will. I guarantee that if we would have put that first goal away it would have been a different game.”
On most of the chances the Tigers had, forward Geo Ramirez was the one making the play. That started early when Ramirez slipped by a Mystic Valley defender and ripped a shot that goalkeeper Nicholas Sokolovic dove forward to save and keep the game scoreless.
“That goal would have been huge,” Moreno said. “When you’re playing on the road, if you can score first the team gets more into it. That would have given a lot of confidence to our team and bring that up. Unfortunately not scoring that goal was huge and a big difference in this game.”
The Tigers had a tough time containing a speedy Mystic Valley team before the Eagles capitalized with 31:45 remaining in the first half. Alexander Maher tossed a throw-in ball from the left corner of the Tech half of the field in front of the net and, after a bad bounce for the Tigers, Lukas Drahos finished the play with a goal off his shoulder to put Mystic Valley ahead 1-0.
Drahos added another goal 12 minutes later when he out-ran a Tech defender and beat goalkeeper Yunior Ramirez with a shot to the right side of the net to extend the Eagles lead to 2-0.
Geo Ramirez had another chance when he ripped a free kick from the left side of the box but Sokolovic made another nice save to keep the shutout before halftime.
“He’s a great player,” Moreno said of Geo Ramirez. “He has been playing hurt with a knee injury so he isn’t 100 percent but he told me, ‘Coach I will do what I can for the team.’ Eventually I took him out later in the game because I knew that he couldn’t do anymore for us.”
Tech had a few more close chances in the second half but the Tigers couldn’t find the back of the net and their season come to a close with a 2-0 loss.
“This is the only team that we didn’t get to finish with in the regular season,” Moreno said of Mystic Valley. “We were losing 1-0 and the game was cancelled because of rain. We had the opportunity tonight to do it again and like I said we came up short because of shots not going in the net when they should have.”
Moreno said he was proud of what his Tigers accomplished during his first year at the helm of the program.
“We were able to accomplish two tournaments, the vocational and the state,” Moreno said. “With that being said I have about seven seniors and a lot of sophomores, freshmen and juniors. We accomplished a lot this year. We finished with a 10-5-2 and we beat big teams. I’m very happy and proud of this team.”
