The much anticipated start to the season for the boy’s soccer team has finally arrived as they begin the season home opener against the 2A North Kitsap Vikings to start the season. The first game for the Cougars would be a pivotal game to not just begin with a win but to remind their future opponents what to expect from the Central Kitsap boy’s soccer team this season.

“It’s also our first game of the season, so you want to start off on the right foot but you also want to aim to try to remind people that we’re a strong program in this area,” head coach of boy’s soccer Patrick Leonard said.

The season opener between Central and North Kitsap respectfully wouldn’t be a league matchup, but would be an anticipated game due to both teams having great soccer teams in the last couple of years.

“They’re a really good team,” Leonard said. “I think they’re one of the strongest 2A teams in the state. So when it comes to that level and a team that good it doesn’t matter if you’re 2A or 3A, you got two really good soccer teams with good players. But again, a game that we can win if we do the right thing.”

Despite the North Kitsap Boys Soccer team being one of the best teams in 2A last year, this didn’t deter any confidence the CK’s soccer team had going into the Saturday afternoon game.

“We know obviously, they’re gonna have a pretty good team coming out,” junior soccer captain Porter Herbig said. “We’re expecting just to go up there confident. Just play our game. Go out there and win.”

The first half of the game against North Kitsap began strong for the Cougars with one of their best players from last season, Jake Mackenzie, scoring the first goal of the season and only goal of the 1st half at the 26:00 mark. The first half highlighted the potential of this team with their offense holding most of the possession while being composed defensively.

“Positives, mostly in the first half and I thought we were winning best sort of 50/50 moments – the moments that were kind of dictating the tempo of the game,” Leonard said.

The beginning of the 2nd half continued to be in the Cougars’ favor as Silas Gholston scored the second goal for the Cougar at the 30:30 mark making it 2-0 by that point. The Cougars were feeling confident at this point to finish this game with a win.

However, the second half was more competitive as North Kitsap bounced back and scored their 1st goal by the 20:44 mark. The game intensely got more aggressive and chippy at times as North Kitsap was coming back into the game. The ‘chippiness’ was bound to happen with these two good teams wanting to begin the season with a win.

“The chippiness was there, but you’re gonna get that,” Leonard said. “We’re gonna go into that for three months here. That’s the standard. We just allowed ourselves to get lost in it a little bit that second half.”

Eventually, the chippiness would lead to a freekick try for North Kitsap to even the score at two apiece. North Kitsap would tie the game at 2-2 going into the final 10 minutes of the game. The game would officially end in an anti-climatic tie of 2-2 against North Kitsap to start the season.

“Tie’s a bummer,” Leonard said. “I will say I thought we were the better team. I thought if the game was a 40 minute game, first half, we’d be good. But reality is when the game has two halves to it, we have to be a part of both halves and thought we dropped our level a bit in the second half.”

Although the outcome was not the one CK wanted, it can be a learning experience for the team and for the rest of the season as they began the three month stretch of games.

“It’s good to recognize this now,” said Leonard. “It’s good for us that the fact that they’re all disappointed tells me that they want it and tells me their headspace is in the right spot. We just have to make a couple adjustments that will certainly be good.”

The next four upcoming games for the CK boy’s soccer team will be on the road with tough league games against Peninsula, North Thurston, Gig Harbor, and River Ridge before they end the month of march on March 30th against Timberline at home.