Defense. Defense. Defense. In the words of George Washington—and also Bill Belichick—”the best offense is a great defense,” and the Mavericks boys soccer team certainly followed these words in full on the night of October 3, 2024.

There’s truly nothing quite as spectacular as a first half full of defense. Despite the low amount of time on the opposing side of the field, the Mavs and their 5-4-1 defense held Silver Creek to a whole lot of zip in the first half. There were a minute number of chances on goal for the Silver Creek Raptors, and every shot they took was fiercely batted down by goalkeeper Josh Worrell or blocked by a Mead defenseman.

“The focus [on defense] was part of the game plan,” said right wingback, Hunter Seery (’25), “we just decided to play defensively, and try and keep them out [of the goal].”

Seery (’25) continued, “In the past four years we’ve played these guys, they’ve put five goals on us. We were just playing defense, and we practiced that for two days. Literally just swinging the ball, and playing defense.”

At the beginning of the second half, the Mavs came out with just as much defensive vigor as they had in the first. Clearing the ball, slide-tackling opponents, and letting little to no shots on goal occur was a fervent piece of the second half.

Despite some missed calls towards the end of the second half, goalkeeper Josh Worrell (’25) batted down the ball and Eduardo (Lalo) Rivera (’27) was able to clear the ball a final time with seconds left to go to put Creek away for good. This clearance had the crowd jeering in excitement as well as the players.

For the Mavs to go from letting in multiple goals to Creek in previous years to building such a strong defense is truly quite the feat—and the boys knew it.

In response to how the team was able to rally around each other, middle back Trevor Kurtz (’25) said, “You know, I think it just comes from off-the-field stuff. We have team dinners, the other weekend we went to our coach’s kid’s game. I think the family that we build around Mead, and the culture we have is such a good place to be in, and we all want to rally around each other and help win a game; or in this case, tie it.”

The Mavericks used the energy from each other and from the crowd to be able to push out a victory tie against a team they had lost every game to for the last four years.

Kurtz (’25) said, “I think just the fact that we have the heart and the want to beat a team, or tie a team that we haven’t beat in four years just really shows [the strength of] our team culture.”

Heart and pride pushed the Mavericks to hold Silver Creek to zero points and minimal shots on goal after four years of hard-fought losses to the Raptors.