By Ray Hamill — The H-DNL champions fell just shy in their bid for a place in this year’s North Coast Section Division-1 boys soccer championship game after losing in heartbreaking fashion on Wednesday.
With the score tied for much of the game, Making Waves Academy netted the winner less than two minutes from time to pull out a 2-1 win over the Tigers at Arcata High School.
In the other Division-1 semifinal, the Fortuna Huskies fell 4-1 to top seed Head-Royce in Oakland.
The loss for the Tigers ends a memorable season, one that saw them win a first outright league title since 2012, and afterwards head coach John Davidson expressed his gratitude to the players.
“It’s such an inspiring group,” he said. “They love to play, they have the bug, so to speak, they have the passion for the game.
“When something like this happens, you remind them it’s about the process, and I think they enjoyed the process.”
It was an evenly matched game, with the visitors taking the lead midway through the first half and the Tigers responding 10 minutes later when Ethan Gyenis headed home off a well-placed Miles Kraemer free kick.
But the Marlins had the final say and the late goal sends them on to the weekend championship game against Head-Royce.
Kayin Kloberdanz had a big day for the Tigers and closed out his high school career with a bang.
“He’s very skilled on the ball and he showed some vision on the ball in the second half,” Davidson said of the senior, who is one of many Arcata seniors thinking about taking their collective talents to College of the Redwoods next year.
Check out Ethan Gyenis’ goal for Arcata above …
Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – Action from Wednesday’s NCS playoff game at Arcata.
Good seasons for both teams. The big city area teams are tough competition. Reads as if HR and MW have good programs… .
player for head-royce here. the large difference in teams from up north and us is pure speed of play. We went up 3-0 against fortuna in the first 15 minutes, then just relaxed, playing much of our bench for the remaining time. Fortuna had good plays but also got frustrated easily at each other and imploded very quickly.
I would disagree and say that is completely false. Fortuna is the 4th best team in humboldt and considering Arcata took making waves down to the wire( the last minute ) they would definitely put up a challenge for head Royce. Also if there was a turf field in Humboldt the speed of play would be higher.
5 players sick 2 gone u just hatin,u guys arguing mid game didn’t make sense catch us when we healthy omm
Oh, it’s more than “speed” for the locals… it is weather and grass turf… ya see, locals believe speed is because of turf, not the players…
Different Head royce player here. I would agree that speed of play was the main difference. Not because of the surface, but merely because we played 1 to 2 touch in pretty much the whole field only dribbling in the final third. Fortuna is a good team but earlier in the season we had beaten Eureka 9-1 because we just passed around them, something we did again to beat Fortuna in the Semis. Against Making Waves, where both them and us play similarly(pass around, 1 to 2 touch) it was pretty competitive but we ultimately won 2-0. Its all about that quick decision making and just “give and go” type playstyle. Fortuna liked to hold on to the ball and dribble, which made it very easy to defend.
I’m sorry I feel that way fun be we were missing 2 players and 8 sick players we had no mind going into that game u guys were arguing with eachother catch us whenever when we all ready omm