H/C boys soccer opens 7AA playoffs at Grand Rapids

HIBBING—If the Hibbing/Chisholm High School boys soccer team wants to advance in the Section 7AA Playoffs, one thing will be important—communication.

The Bluejackets will have to start talking more today when they travel to Grand Rapids to take on the Thunderhawks, beginning at 6 p.m. at Noble-Hall Field.

Hibbing/Chisholm has the No. 6 seed, while Grand Rapids is the No. 3 seed, but Bluejacket coach Logan Harvey believes his team can pull off an upset.

“We’re a lot better than our record indicates, so hopefully, we can surprise some people,” Harvey said. “They’re a good team, so we have to go out and leave it all out on the field.

“We have to give it everything we’ve got.”

It won’t be easy to beat the Thunderhawks, who were in the Section 7AA title game last year.

“They’re very strong,” Harvey said. “They only lost one player out of that group. We know they’re strong. When they played us here, things didn’t go our way. Defensively, their keeper is fantastic, possibly the best in the conference.

“We have to put our best defensive lineup out there, and see what they can do. They will play good defense, so we have to match that. We tweaked our lineup a little bit to maintain possession. We’ll play our best defense, then we can roll the dice as best as we can.”

The only problem for the Bluejackets is that their defense is young.

“We have a lack of experience,” Harvey said. “A lot of these guys haven’t touched the field until this year, including our keeper. They have to go out there and do everything right.

“We’ve made a lot of improvements from where we started. It is what it is. We have to go out there and do it.”

Hibbing/Chisholm will be missing one of its forwards, so the scoring will have to come from someplace else.

“With that speed, we were able to feed the ball up the middle, then dump it over the top, and let him get,” Harvey said. “Without him, we’ll need a lot more teamwork and combination passing.

“Our wings have to be strong. Everyone has to crash and move up. We need everybody up there and get bodies in the box.”

That’s where that communication comes in handy.

“We have to play like a team,” Harvey said. “We’ve done well for the most part, but we take games off when we don’t talk. Everyone has to talk, especially our back for. We’ve seen improvements, but in our last game, we didn’t talk and it didn’t go well.

“The key for us is communication.”