Murphy – The Murphy varsity boys soccer team hosted 4A Pisgah in their third straight non-conference match of the season.
The Dogs (1-2-1) hosted Pisgah (4-0-2) and fell 3-2 during an 80-minute battle with the Bears.
The first goal of the match was scored less than three minutes into the game. Pisgah found the back of the net on a shot that went just over Murphy goalkeeper Cale Hager’s outstretched hands.
About three minutes later, Pisgah got a penalty kick and scored to take a 2-0 lead 5:31 into the match.
With 21:47 left in the first half, Murphy got a penalty kick and Tyler Payne drove it into the goal to bring the match within one goal. The remainder of the first half went scoreless in the back-and-forth match.
Pisgah took the 2-1 lead to halftime.
The Bears of Pisgah made it 3-1 with 28:40 left in the second half. After a long pass, they put the ball in the opposite bottom corner of the net to increase their lead to two.
With 18:25 left in the second half, Payne was fouled and the Dogs got a free kick near midfield. From almost 50 yards out, Jerry Bui took the free kick and found the back of the net over the goalkeeper’s head.
Both teams played physical throughout the match, but the physicality and chirping increased in the final 10 minutes of the match.
Pisgah ran the clock in the final minutes and the Dogs lost the match 3-2.
After the match, Bulldogs head coach Andrew Zenobi said he was proud of his team for how they played against Pisgah.
“I think that a 3-2 finish is a pretty big deal for a 2A school. Anybody that knows anything about soccer knows how good Pisgah is ... that’s a pretty big deal for a team like ours in such a small school, a football school, to compete with a school like Pisgah, especially when we’ve seen the scores they’ve had against other conference opponents, so it looks promising for our team going forward,” Zenobi said.
Bui and goalkeeper Cale Harger stood out to Zenobi in the match.
“Jerry Bui and obviously like he had his long free kick goal, but more than that, we had an injury, and it’s a pretty big deal to move your All-State, striker from last year and say, ‘OK, you gotta play defense today because I lost my defender,’ and he just stepped in, did it. He’s done it two games in a row and that’s a pretty big deal to me. And it shows his character as a player. Then Cale Harger. I don’t know how many saves he had, but it was quite a few,” Zenobi said.
To prepare for upcoming Smoky Mountain Conference opponents in the coming weeks, Zenobi said that they are going to focus on their game and play Murphy soccer.
“We’re gonna just work on our game. We have some very talented aspects of our game that I don’t feel we are using effectively. [Aug. 28] we’re going to work on that, and going forward, we’re going to have to really take advantage of these certain skills we have that other teams aren’t necessarily going to know how to deal with and we’ve only used it effectively a couple times this season,” Zenobi said.
“I think that working towards that is what we’re going to do and obviously fitness. When you’re playing against schools like Swain, they’re gonna run you a bit, and so we’re gonna have to keep that fitness and creating opportunities on the attack. So things tend to stall out on our attack a little bit, and we’re definitely gonna work on fixing that.”
Up next
Murphy will travel to Swain County at 6 p.m. today to face the Maroon Devils. At 6 p.m. Monday, the Bulldogs will face in-county rivals Andrews on the road in their first meeting of the season.