Katy loses Tiger final, making progress early in season

By Tyler Tyre, Sports Editor
Posted 1/15/22

“Playing teams like this, really good teams is just really good practice for us,” said Katy goalkeeper Jessica Rico. “We can look back at this and take some good things but also improve a lot."

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Katy loses Tiger final, making progress early in season

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Katy has steadily improved to start the 2021 season.

The Tigers entered the season wanting to compete in every game ad have done just that to start the season, finding their way in every match and finding ways to improve.

“The growth has been tremendous,” said Katy head coach Dianne Loftin. “We’ve started to gel, we have a lot of seniors, but not all of them played a lot last year. We also have brought three freshman in and had the COVID-19 issues and injuries to deal with. We really haven’t had a full roster to play with yet, but everyone is improving and starting to get to know one another. Hopefully before district starts we’ll have everyone healthy and ready to go.”

Katy advanced to the final of the Tiger bracket in the I-10 shootout over the weekend, beating Heights 2-1 and Oak Ridge 3-1 in the opening rounds of the tournament.

The Tigers put up a fight, but ultimately ended up losing the final 3-0 to Dripping Springs on Saturday at Legacy Stadium.

Dripping Springs, which is undefeated on the year and is defending state champions, came into the game having won its two tournament games by a combined score of 14-1 and look to be one of the better teams in the entire state of Texas.

“This is a great team that we played today and there was a couple of things that we wanted to accomplish coming in and I thought we did those things,” Loftin said. “They’ve beaten teams seven to nothing and they have some really good players. We struggled on the first goal just trying to clear the ball and with how windy it was it made us struggle in that first half, but I think the defense handled it really well and I feel good about it.”

Dripping Springs first goal came in the tenth minute, off a ball that jumbled around the box after a failed clearance. Dripping Springs added a second just two minutes later and took a 2-0 lead into halftime. Dripping Springs added a third shortly after halftime to put the game away.

“Playing teams like this, really good teams is just really good practice for us,” said Katy goalkeeper Jessica Rico. “We can look back at this and take some good things but also improve a lot and figure out what we need to work on more. Playing in these types of tournaments just helps make us a better team.”

In District 19-6A, there are no games off, and the Tigers know they will have to be at their best every week. With district play coming up in the teams next matchup, the Tigers know they have to take every day seriously.

“They have to know they can’t take a team lightly in our district and it’s something we just talked about and you have to bring it every game,” Loftin said. “We’ve been working on and talking about how serious we have to take our prep. It becomes a grind, it’s a long season and we have to make sure we treat everyday like that. One of the problems we’ve had in the past is we beat a good team but then come out flat against a team we should beat. One of the biggest goals this year is to not have those type of games.”

Katy ISD, Katy, Dripping Springs, high school, soccer, Texas, sports