Dover pleased with FHS soccer season despite state loss
MURFREESBORO --- It was a bittersweet evening of firsts for Farragut High’s School’s boys soccer team on Tuesday, May 23.
The sweet: the Admirals made their first Class AAA State Tournament appearance since 2014.
The bitter: Farragut dropped a 1-0 decision to Germantown Houston in the tournament quarterfinals at Richard Siegel Soccer Complex. That was the first time the Admirals were shut out in 2017.
“We came into the game averaging five goals per game and this was the first time anybody had shut us out all season,” FHS head coach Ray Dover said. “They did a good job of not letting us play our game, which is possessing the ball and moving it around.
“They’re good. You get to the state tournament and you draw Houston. You know that you’re going to have to play them at some point if you’re going to win a state championship and I wanted to play them first. There are no excuses.”
The stat sheet looked nightmarish for the Admirals (18-6-1). The Mustangs, who went on to finished second after losing to Station Camp 1-0 in the title game, outshot Farragut 17-6. Eight of Houston’s shots landed on target.
The Mustangs took a 1-0 lead when Collin Scott tallied in the 13th minute of the match.
Farragut, which had only two of its shots land on frame, couldn’t muster a shot after halftime. Houston also had six corner kicks while limiting FHS to just two.
“They definitely had more shots than us,” Dover said. “I didn’t think that they had that many. They scored their goal early, in the first 20 minutes. They were good.”
Looking ahead, “Most of our starters are underclassmen. We’re on the up-and-up in Farragut,” said Dover, the Admirals second-year coach. “We have talent in our program. ... Our freshman team beat just about everybody they played. We have the program going in the direction that we want it and the future is bright.”
“We were able to right a lot of wrongs from our previous season,” he added. “We beat [Christian Academy of Knoxville] this year and we weren’t able to do that last year. And we beat Webb.
Along with playoff wins at Bearden and at Maryville, “We beat Oak Ridge twice and we were able to beat the defending Class 4A champion from Georgia.”
