On Friday night, the Miners boys soccer team welcomed regional foe Highland to the fields at Quinn’s Junction for Park City’s senior night game.
The Miners faithful packed the stands and surrounding areas of the Quinn’s Junction pitch. A pizza truck serving up hot slices and a Park City boys lacrosse game the field over helped draw additional fans to the area.
For the first 71 minutes or so of Friday’s game, the Miners and their fans seemed like they would be heading home with nothing more than a slice of pie. Highland scored a backbreaking, final-second, first-half goal, then another painful goal with about 33 minutes left in the game.
While the Miners kept their head down, nothing paid dividends until about nine minutes left in the game, when junior Finn Burnett sent a kick screaming from outside the Highland penalty box into the back of the opposition’s net. Park City still had a bit more work to do to even send the game to overtime. That’s when sophomore Kellen Gourley found the back of Highland’s net with the equalizer.
The two shortened overtime periods resulted in no goals for either time, so it was onto a shootout to decide the game. In the shootout, Highland scored on every opportunity and blocked two of the Miners’ attempts on goal for the 4-2 shootout victory. Enthralled fans braved cooling spring temperatures during the overtime periods and shootout as the sun set and an orange moon quickly rose over the Wasatch Back.
“What a senior night,” Burnett said. “We couldn’t have asked for better from the community showing up and helping us out.”
He continued, “We didn’t get the result, but our energy was great.”
Gourley believes some of this senior class’s favorite memories will include battling through a snowstorm in their Wednesday loss to Juan Diego and clawing back from Highland’s 2-0 lead on Friday. The nine-man senior class includes Adrian Talavera, Jeremie Hopkins, Leo Santiago, Ryder Magnuson, Quinn Kelly, Tanner Pidwell, Max Schneider, Owen Ketz and Zebby Crossland.
“We still showed up,” Gourley said. “I think that reflects Park City’s mentality and the way that we live; even if there’s snow on the ground, we’re going to still keep going.”
DiCicco is proud of the senior class for continuing to play with pride and represent Park City. He believes that’s something that players like Burnett and Gourley continue to pick up on.
“It’s a part of understanding your part of something bigger than yourself,” DiCicco said. “They’re building on the legacy of the guys who came before.”
DiCicco said the team will not be panicking after last week’s losses. The Miners will travel Tuesday afternoon to take on fellow regional foe Judge Memorial Catholic at 3:30 p.m. in their regular-season finale.
“After two losses this week, there’s a sense you have to turn things around,” DiCicco said. “But, our mentality is one game at a time, so even if it was two wins this week, we wouldn’t really be trying to turn that around. We are just trying to be a better version of ourselves tomorrow than we are today. There’s certainly lessons for us to extract from this game, and we’ll do that, head into Tuesday and go after it again.”
The 4A playoff brackets will be revealed on Wednesday morning at 10 a.m., with Park City hoping to cling onto one of the final spots that will host a first round playoff game on Friday. If the Miners do host a playoff game, Burnett is hoping for similar fan turnout and energy from his team.
“We didn’t get the result, but our energy was great,” Burnett said. “We need to carry that into the playoffs, and hopefully we see success.”