The Malibu High boys soccer team wrapped up a rough season on a high note last week, beating Bishop Diego 4-1.
Junior Koa Mack felt the win is a good confidence booster for next season.
“It gives the kids that are coming back next year something to build off of,” he said.
The contest against the Cardinals featured the Sharks down 0-1 early, but then with 7:15 left before halftime, senior Jake Noles, a San Francisco State soccer signee, snuck a ball by the Cardinals’ defense on a penalty kick.
“I knew I couldn’t kick it over the wall because the wind would have picked it up and thrown it over, so I picked my spot, hit it nice and curved it,” he said.
Malibu’s underclassmen broke open the 1-1 contest after halftime, netting three goals. Mack had two of those goals. The first came with just under 23 minutes on the clock when he knocked an inbounds pass from the left corner off his head and into the Cardinals’ goal.
About 12 minutes later, senior Kevin Baum scored off a kick from about 20 feet deep in the right corner of the field. Baum’s goal put Malibu up 3-1. With two minutes left in the game, Mack got into the goalkeeper area and scored again off of an inbounds pass.
Noles was glad to end the season with a win.
“The whole team played together and played as hard as we could,” he said.
Second-year coach Julian Wright knew the victory, which came on the annual Senior Night, was much needed.
“It was particularly important for the kids going out,” he said. “In general it has been a rough year.”
The Sharks’ win ended a losing streak that stopped at four games and closed out a season in which Malibu finished 7-12- 1. The Sharks started the season with a 1-2 record and never found the right footing. With the losses came wins against Camarillo, Buena, Nordoff, Santa Paula and San Pedro. Before last week, the Sharks last won on Jan. 28 against Santa Barbara-based Bishop Diego. The four-game swoon included losses to Nordoff, Cate, Santa Paula and Carpinteria.
Wright said an injury bug hindered Malibu this season.
“We had so many injuries this year that we made multiple call-ups of kids that were only expected to play [on the junior varsity team] and ended up only playing serious minutes on varsity all year long,” he said.
“We did as well as we could to finish with a decent record,” Noles said.
Now, the Sharks turn their attention to improving next season.
Wright hopes the younger talent will step up.
“We have tons of kids coming through,” he said. “They have lots of energy. They are good team players.”
“We have seen here that they can sub in and get it done,” he added. “Scoring goals against league opponents…so moving forward the future is bright and we look forward to seeing those kids progress.”
He also stressed that next year’s team needs to keep conditioning and working on their skill set.
“They know they can’t take any time off,” he said. “They also know what it is like to have a rough year and hopefully they can come back determined not to have the type of year they had this year.”