Soccer at a Golf Resort

By Joseph Lee

Ten weeks of hard and gritty work of practices and games all amount to a week of soccer. A week at a Golf Resort in Chiang Mai where eight teams compete against each other for the ACSC Soccer champion crown. Last year, Dalat saw a lot of success by easing through the tournament with a comfortable 6-0 record, making ACSC history by not losing a single game. But this year, we knew the stakes were different since we were the team to beat. 

We started our first game off against Morrison, where we would see victory with a 2-1 win. Our second game was against ICS-HK, which we won 3-1. Our last group game against YISS was a hard-fought and intense match where we saw victory by scoring in the last five minutes, winning 1-0. These three group games placed us as the first seed, facing the other group’s last seed for the first bracket game.

We started our bracket journey against SPH, a tough and physical game that we won 3-0, which set us against Grace, the host team, in the semi-finals. Grace was a very physically strong and well-built team, and since this was the game to go through the finals, we knew that it would be a battle. It was a very even match, but Grace got the slight edge over us in the last minute, ending the match in a 0-1 loss, Dalat’s first soccer loss in two years of ACSC soccer.

It was a very disappointing loss, but we still had one more game to go through to make sure we brought some silverware back home. It was the third-place match against ICS-HK. Though we won them in the group stages with a comfortable 3-1 victory, we still wanted to ensure that third place was ours. We did this by winning the game 4-0, finishing our season with a third-place finish at ACSC. 

Wei Ee Goh (12) said, “Although it was very disappointing that we couldn’t play in the finals, I am still happy that the boys were able to push through and place third.”  

It was not the placement we wanted, but we are still happy that we could bring back silverware home. And seeing how the team rebounded from the unfortunate semi-final loss gives us hope for the years to come for the Dalat Varsity Boys soccer team.