The Jets soccer teams flew down to Jeju for their season opener at Korean International School of Jeju (KISJ) on April 17-19. A total of five schools attended the tourney: DIS, KISJ, Saint Johnsbury Academy of Jeju (SJAJ), North London Collegiate School (NLCS), and Fayston Preparatory School (FPS). However, due to the lack of competition, all eight teams, including JV, fought for the same trophy in the same bracket.
The Jets struggled to find their footing and adjust to larger fields as it was their first time playing on turf of that size the entire season. The longer passes and further sprints stunted them momentarily, but they eventually caught on. The first day, DIS nearly beat SJAJ varsity (4 to 3) and then lost to FPS (4 to 0).
For the final match of day 1, varsity pulled off a stand out win, beating the eventual runners-up 3:0 in an effortless victory. “When we went against KISJ 2, I honestly thought it was the easiest game we had in KISAC. But they ended up getting second place. When I watched their other games, they were a very strong team and I started to wonder how we beat that team in the first place,” said Aaron Shin, varsity Midfielder.
The small Daegu varsity squad proved they could go toe to toe against the bigger Jeju teams to pull off a Cinderella story. “That really tells us that soccer is a game of chances. I was proud of the team because we beat the second place team 3:0, so winning the championship wasn’t a far-fetched goal,” said Shin.
Junior varsity endured the same roadblocks and experienced “Jet lag”: not from the plane ride, but from adjusting to a new, unfamiliar environment. The expanded field length threw off their perception and positioning, which caused them to lag behind both mentally and physically. Just like varsity, however, they began to adapt.
The second day didn’t go too well for both varsity and JV as they lost their games heading into the winner’s bracket against NLCS (5:0) and SJAJ (5:0) respectively. They also lost their following matches: varsity to KISJ (4:0) and JV to SJAJ 2 (4:2).
For the final games, the two squads ended up squaring up against each other, an intra-school faceoff. Even with everyone battered up from a weekend of injuries, the familiar friends, now foes, ignited a final burst of energy from both sides. “I saw the varsity team struggle against us. We had Yeonhoo, Jason, and Lian. They were great. Although it was their first year of highschool soccer, they were extremely passionate, motivated, worked really hard, and they ran a lot,” said Lewis Kim, a senior JV striker.
The match ended in a score of 2:1, Jets varsity on top, marking the end of their tourney. “When I played against the JV team, we were all out of energy. We put in a lot of work. We ran a lot, we defended, we attacked, so we were out of energy. So, by the end of the competition we didn’t really have enough energy to go fully hard against the JV team, so obviously we went easy on them,” said Shin.
The boy’s first soccer tournament proved to be a valuable learning experience. They mixed and matched lineups to find solutions to games on bigger fields. “All players who played developed a lot of knowledge, a lot of game time, 300 minutes of football, it’s a lot of vital time to grow and learn. They changed positions a lot so again exposure to many positions. Every player on the football court always changes positions through their career and finds areas they are better in and weaker in and they learn more,” said Coach Purdy.
At the end of the day, Maddox Jolly from DIS 2 and Ethan Rossmeisl from DIS 1 received the all-tournament medals for their outstanding performances. Now, they aim to prove themselves in the friendly against Daegu Middle High School (DMHS) and the SKAIS tournament on May 10th and 17th.
