Manhattan High boys soccer tied 1-1 with Wichita Heights away on Tuesday during their first match of the season. 

“It wasn’t bad for our first game,” head coach Mike Sanchez said. “We’ve got a lot of new players taking the field for their first time in a Varsity game or it’s their first time starting Varsity, so I think it was good to get those first game jitters out of the way.”

Manhattan took the lead in the first half with a goal from sophomore Gedrick Comiso, but quickly conceded a goal due to a 90-yard goal kick which bounced over junior goalie Lance Scudder’s head. That match went to double overtime and golden goal but remained a tie.

“We should have won this game,” Comiso said. “We missed a lot of very easy opportunities, it should have gone to us.”

The team is rebuilding this year after graduating 19 seniors last season, and are tasked with building an entirely new defensive line-up. The only returning starters are seniors Ibrahim Ciftci and Grant Snowden, with Comiso and junior Cade Cameron making their first appearances as Varsity starters and the remainder of the team having little to no Varsity experience at all.

“We’re a really young team,” William Robben said. “But I don’t think we came out that scared. Obviously there are gonna be teams that are more physical than us and bigger than us and I don’t think we shied away from that, I still think we bought a competitive edge.”

Although they didn’t win this one, the boys hope to build on this first match going into the Wichita Titan tournament next week, where they will play Heights again on Monday. 

“I think [this result] is positive, there’s a lot we can take away from it and fix for when we play them again next Monday,” Sanchez said. “We want to go in [to the Titan tournament] and I would say we want to be successful which would mean we want to play in the final on Saturday.”