Friday night in Park City provided picturesque conditions for spring prep sports: The sun was fading below the Wasatch Mountains, the Miners boys lacrosse team was celebrating their senior night game at the fields at Quinn’s Junction, parents were grilling up food for all and Park City’s boys soccer team was set to begin their playoff run the field over.
A 8-9 season had yielded the Miners boys soccer team the 16th seed in the 4A playoffs, just good enough for the final home playoff host spot. They welcomed former regional foe Tooele up from the Salt Lake Valley for the win-or-go-home contest.
An early Park City goal by senior Max Schneider put the hosts in the driver’s seat right away. Fellow senior Adrien Talavera extended the Miners lead to two minutes later.
Park City senior Tanner Pidwell sliced his way through the Tooele defense for a late-second half goal to all-but put the game on ice. Tooele’s Erick Rojas found the back of the Miners net with minutes left in the game to strike some fear into Park City, but they never drew within striking distance. As the Miners dribbled the clock out, the final score read 3-1.
“We had ups and downs in our season,” said Talavera. “But having those ups and downs motivated us to keep on going. … Getting a 16 seed, playing our last home game, we just came out for the crowd and played our game.”
DiCicco agreed with his senior that the team has been resilient this season. The head ball coach always talks about wanting his teams to peak come playoff time, which he believes they did Friday.
“We extract the lessons from the good ones and the tough ones, and just keep getting better,” DiCicco said. “Now, we have got to push it to the next level for the next game.”
Talavera said his teammates insisted pregame that Friday was going to be his day. He said it was nice to end his high school career at home with a bang.
Fellow Park City senior Zebby Crossland said having come back from multiple goals before this season inspired the Miners to stay locked in being up this time. They know the up-and-down nature of high school soccer.
“We’ve been down in this season and still had the belief to come back,” Crossland said. “Being up 2-0 for most of the game, we knew that they could still have the belief to come back, and we just had to stay consistent with our pressure and playing style.”
Crossland said May 1’s senior night game, where Park City rallied from down two goals in the final minutes to send Highland to overtime and a penalty shootout, and Friday’s game are some of the best memories of his high school career.
“My senior year has definitely been my favorite year,” Crossland said. “We had some great games here. … I love this group of guys.”
Crossland, Talavera and co. will have to summon their best soccer to keep their season going. They will travel to regional foe Murray on Tuesday to take on the top-seed in 4A at 4 p.m. Murray has walloped the Miners by a combined score of 10-1 in their two meetings in the regular season.
“For us, it’s really not as much about Murray as being the best version of ourselves,” DiCicco said. “Same thing we did to Tooele today. We know what they’re capable of; we know they can be dangerous. But I also don’t think we’ve put together our most complete performance and best game against them yet, and that’s what we have to endeavor to do on Tuesday.”
Park City took Friday night to enjoy the first-round win and got back to work Saturday. DiCicco supposed Murray was likely at the game Friday doing their scouting homework, and his team has to equal their preparations.
DiCicco brought in girls golf head coach George Murphy to his team’s victory huddle Friday. He offered some words of encouragement and examples from his own team’s recent state victory for the boys to follow moving forward.
“He just told us that basically anything can happen,” Talavera said about Murphy.