Manhattan High boys soccer took a 8-2 win against Highland Park during the senior night match on Thursday, making them 9-1-4 going into the last week of the regular season.

“It was a great feeling to win on senior night,” senior Ibrahim Ciftci said. “I’ve played with these guys for a long time. And, you know, we’ve come a long way in our game but our friendships have developed further.”

MHS usually gets an easy win against Highland Park, beating them 9-1 last season and mercy ruling them the one before that. However, they got a scare this match after going down 1-0 four minutes into the match.

“We always come out slow,” Ciftci said. “You go down 1-0, you’re losing the game, and you have to fight back again and you just have to fight harder and harder once again. But you know we fought back, we came back, we won in the end, and I think that’s all that matters.”

They came back quickly, with senior Marco Zambrano scoring in the sixth minute and Ged Comiso following up with another one eight minutes later, leaving the score 2-1 at the half.

MHS came out strong after halftime and increased their lead to 4-1 with goals from Comiso and senior Grant Snowden within two minutes of the break.

“[I] just lined them up and told them ‘hey, we had 29 shots the first half, 14 on frame,’ so we have to do better with our chances and definitely put them away,” head coach Mike Sanchez said.

The team finished off the game 8-2 with goals from Ciftci, junior Carter Oehme and junior Avery Adams. The boys go into their last week of the season with two away games against Topeka West and Shawnee Heights on Tuesday and Thursday. 

“Shawnee Heights has a good soccer team and T[opeka] West we beat last year, looking to do it again,” Snowden said. “But we really want to go out with two wins, especially going into the postseason because I feel like we really need that momentum to get the wheels rolling a little bit and really just catch fire.”