The Wildcats Boys Soccer team has struggled to open the season vs. strong opponents in non-league play. Wilsonville went to Silverton with a record of 1-2, and up to that point, all three games had been against 6A opponents, with a win against Nelson a week before.

Wilsonville has had a solid offense so far this season, only being held to a clean sheet once despite the demanding schedule. The defense has been a little more of a struggle for the Wildcats, allowing four goals against West Linn and two against Cleveland in their losses before Silverton. “It’s just good for us because we don’t want to play bad teams; we want to play good teams to help ourselves so we know what’s coming in the playoffs,” said Junior Forward Alex Aguiar.

Silverton, meanwhile, was undefeated, scoring at least two goals in all four of their games, led by highly athletic Senior Forward Anton Mikkelson. “We had to find speed and physicality that could keep up with that, had to tweak the lineup a little bit, just having a specific plan of shutting him down,” said Head Coach Ian Reschke. Silverton didn’t just have a great offense, though, as they held their opponent to a clean sheet in three of the four games played.

The game started slowly, with no goals in the first 40 minutes despite a few good opportunities, until Mikkelson finally opened the scoring with only a few minutes left in the first half. The second half wouldn’t be as standard.

Fifteen minutes into the 2nd half, Silverton found an open look and scored to push the Foxes lead to 2. Not even 2 minutes later, in-game time, Junior Sergio Day got a goal past an outstanding Silverton goalkeeper to pull them back within one goal. Only 3 minutes later, Mikkelson found his teammate with a through ball to reinstate the 2 goal lead.

This continued with there being five goals in 10 minutes. After going down 4-1, the Wildcats didn’t give up, with goals from Senior Champ Ott and Junior Alex Aguiar bringing it back to 4-3 with 22 minutes remaining.

Next week, Wilsonville will begin league play, and the team is looking forward to it. “When we start playing some less talented teams, we can start actually playing and not just defending,” says Aguiar. Wilsonville’s first league game is at Parkrose on Tuesday, September 26th, at 7:00 p.m.