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By Scott Loftis
SLoftis@CarrollCoNews.com
By any measure, the Berryville Bobcats had a successful soccer season in 2023. After missing the state tournament a year ago, the Bobcats returned this spring and made a statement with a pair of victories that put them one game away from an appearance in the state championship game.
But it wasn’t meant to be. The DeQueen Leopards put in a goal in the final minute of the first half and made the lead hold up for a 1-0 victory over the Bobcats in the semifinals of the Class 4A state soccer tournament on Saturday in Little Rock.
“We set our goals high this year and they reached almost every expectation,” Berryville coach Grant Hutson said. “Sometimes the cookie doesn’t crumble the way you want it to in the very end. But I’m proud of how hard we played in the entire tournament given the circumstances and I’m proud of all the kids, especially the seniors, for never giving up and playing until the last whistle.”
Berryville advanced to the semifinals with a second- round victory over Brookland on Friday, May 12, winning on penalty kicks to break a 2-2 tie.
“We had done some film research and kind of got tendencies on the guys we were going to play against in that game,” Hutson said. “And the day before, Brookland had gone to penalty kicks and it was live-streamed, so we kind of got to see what they had done before. Our goalie did a fantastic job and saved two of the shots and we made it to the semis.”
Hutson gave DeQueen plenty of credit for its semifinal win.
“DeQueen’s extremely good,” he said. “They have a bunch of players. I think they have over 30 kids. I think they just wore us down in the end. They could make eight to nine player substitutions at a time and get us gassed.”
The Leopards scored the game’s only goal with 32 seconds remaining in the first half.
“We played hard the whole time,” Hutson said. “I was proud of that. There’s no reason to be disappointed in the season. I’m disappointed in how it ended, but it was a very good season.”
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