Friday’s game was full of drama and suspense as the Shawnee Mission South men’s soccer team kicked off their season against Northwest and lost 1-2 in a last minute nail-biter. Northwest came out strong and scored the first goal of the game in the 35th minute. However, Jeffrey Marquez, a senior forward, didn’t let it get to his head.

“We just don’t try to get on each others’ back; we just try to lift each other, motivate each other and see it as a 0-0 game and to play and not rush the ball and just play our normal game,” Marquez said when asked about how they react when an opponent scores so early into a game.

The Raiders then came back in the second half with Omar Sayang scoring a penalty kick in the 14th minute. Three minutes later, a scuffle broke out on the field when a Northwest player slid cleats first into goalkeeper Wiley Kirk.

One minute later, junior TJ Mikkelson went down with an injury after trying to play through an earlier injury.

“Obviously he’s an important player, a captain during that game [with captain Tim Nuñez being suspended],” Marquez said when asked how this affected the team’s morale. “He just came off and he tried to come back on and … had to come back off again. He was devastated and he felt like he let us down and everything, but we were just praying for the best hoping he would be better… He’s a huge part of our team.”

One minute after that, Northwest came back and scored a penalty kick to seal the deal.

However, the highlight of the game was when junior Marcus Smith ended up on Sportscenter’s Twitter with his bicycle kick save. When ESPN posted it on their Instagram, it got over 170,000 views.

A possible contributing factor to the loss were the suspensions. So far, five players have been suspended for various drug related issues including vaping.

“We do miss them, but they’ll be back and we will be better with them,” senior Gryphon Hayes said.