The Park City High School girls soccer team has traditionally used its non-region slate to test itself against superior competition ahead of regional play. However, the Miners haven’t won their season opener since 2012, and a tie in 2013 was the only such game they didn’t lose.
That trend continued Thursday morning.
The Miners faced Fremont, a squad that finished last season as a semifinalist in the Class 6A playoffs and defeated Box Elder 4-1 earlier in the week. The Silverwolves plastered the Miners 7-0, and it was clear that a Park City squad that is replacing 12 seniors from last year still has plenty of work to do.
Park City coach Tom Merchant, for one, views that as an opportunity.
“It’s a challenge for us, but as we talked to them, we do preseason games to learn what we need to do better, and this showed us clearly what we need to do better,” Merchant said. “I don’t mind a challenge, I want us to play better. But now we have five days before the next match, we know what we need to work on.”
Early in the first half, Fremont’s Ashlyn Gwynn tracked down a long cross on the left wing and fired a shot toward the goal. Her curling effort beat Park City goalkeeper Emerson Abraham high, and the Silverwolves were up 1-0. They doubled their lead moments later when Abraham attempted to scoop up the ball on a breakaway, but the ball got away and Fremont tucked the loose ball into the vacant net to make it 2-0.
The game settled down for the rest of the first half, as Park City’s defense kept Fremont away from the net for most of the remainder of the half. But then Fremont’s Olivia Van Orden successfully chipped Abraham from the right wing for a 3-0 Silverwolves lead before halftime.
Aside from the early mishaps, Abraham was Park City’s best player on Thursday. She made a couple key diving saves on quality scoring chances late in the first half and into the second to prevent further damage, like a mercy-rule win.
“(She) had a fantastic game, despite the number of goals,” Merchant said. “She kept us playing, gave us a chance to learn a lot of stuff.”
Fremont continued to pour it on in the second half, scoring its fourth goal of the game on a counterattack about five minutes in and then made it 5-0 a few minutes later. The Silverwolves tacked on two more late to complete the 7-0 blowout.
Merchant said that only three players who played significant minutes for Park City on Thursday were returners from last year’s team. Everyone on the varsity team played on Thursday to help Merchant and the rest of the coaching staff get a better idea of how to use the roster and create a more cohesive team.
“Some things are interesting and we have places to look, but it’s a learning process for the coaches as much as the girls,” Merchant said. “They’re coming from playing JV games to playing a 6A team, it’s a big step.”
The good news for the Miners is that they have until next Tuesday to become more comfortable with each other ahead of a match against Spanish Fork, which is coming off a 3-14 season last year and started the year with a similar 6-1 loss to Syracuse.
“There are things we can work on, we talked about what we’re going to work on this week,” Merchant said. “We’re going to work on first defender, on not diving in and making careless mistakes that way, and connecting passes. Fitness is still an issue. It’s early in the season, and we’re probably going to run some more this week.”
Correction: The secondary headline on this article initially misstated the length of the Miners’ losing streak in season-opening games.