March 19, 2024

Victory continues to elude PCM boys soccer

DES MOINES — The Prairie City-Monroe boys soccer team played its best game in two weeks on the road against Des Moines Christian on Tuesday.

But lack of skill at the offensive end of the pitch continues to plague the Mustangs as they dropped to 0-12 on the season following a 3-0 loss to the Lions at James W. Cownie Soccer Park.

“The difference in the game is just skill level,” PCM coach Darrin Telfer said. “We just need a higher skill level.”

The Lions led 2-0 at halftime after Nolan Dunn scored his first goal of the season 8 minutes into the match and Thomas Kinley added his fifth in the 22nd minute. Both goals were scored off deflections.

“We really should have lost this game 1-0, but I am not into moral victories,” Telfer said. “I feel good about the way we played though. We played better today.”

The Mustangs were coming off a 17-1 defeat at the hands of Newton. They were shut out for the sixth time this year and have only scored one goal in the last six matches.

“Today was the best we looked in two weeks,” Telfer said. “We had a week there where we played Chariton and Centerville really tough and those were games that we maybe should have won. We had a little bit of a lull there and today was the best game that we played.

Hopefully, we are looking up toward North Polk.”

North Polk may be the final chance the Mustangs have at breaking into the win column.

The Comets lost to Des Moines Christian 2-0 at home. They’ll host PCM at 5:30 p.m. Friday.

The Mustangs begin postseason play at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday when they return to Newton to face the Cardinals for a second time.

“We need to continue to work on working together,” Telfer said. “They are good kids. But we are young. I hate to look toward next year, but we have to start working on things that we haven’t done well this year and make sure we improve on that for next year. We have to got do more in the offseason. We have to get more touches on the ball in the offseason.

“We have to believe we are going to beat North Polk on Friday.”

Des Moines Christian added a goal in the second half when Logan Vander Plaats scored his second of the season off a nice set up from Logan Abbott, who leads the team in scoring.

It was Abbott’s fourth assist of the year.

This will be the last year the Lions use Cownie Soccer Park as their home site. Their matches will be moved to campus next year after construction of a new football field and track is completed.

The Lions improved to 11-3 on the season and the win against PCM was their fourth straight. All three losses were by 1-0 scores.