COLLINSVILLE - Edwardsville senior midfielder Axton Anom played very well for the Tigers in their 2-1 loss at Collinsville Tuesday night at Kahok Stadium, as did the entire team.
After the loss, the Tigers' spirits were still up and positive, and Anom felt the Tigers did play as well as they could in the second match of the year against Collinsville.
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"I'm always feeling bad after the loss," Anom said in a post-match interview, "but I think the boys gutted it out from the beginning to the end. I think we worked hard on defense, but we sat out. We had a mission coming into this game to work hard and play our soccer and I think we did that. A little mistake for the goal, but I'll take the blame for that one on that one, but I think we just move on after this."
It was a very clinical, goal-scorers type of goal that Reiniger score to give the Kahoks the three points, but the Tigers still worked hard throughout the 80 minutes, just falling short in the end.
"Yeah, we went out there, we worked hard," Anom said. "We knew the game was going to be a difficult one. Obviously, Adam Reiniger, he's a pretty good striker. We had his number going into the game, we had (Ben) Leardi on him. He did a good job; at the beginning of the game, he was working on him and throughout the game, just standing him up. But obviously, a goal scorer like that is going to get around eventually find the net at some point."
Anom is an iCAN Clinic Male Athlete of the Month for the Tigers. After conceding an early goal, Edwardsville fought back well and even had the better of the play during the middle portions of the game, eventually tying the game at the hour.
"Yeah, we were working," Anom said. "As I said before, we've got hard workers up there. On that goal, I think it was Blye Brickman just being able to move over there and beat that guy around the corner. He had to win it back over in that corner to get the ball across and I think we had to work great to get ourselves in front of goal and put that away. But we had the majority of the game just working hard, moving it around, playing our soccer."
From here, the Tigers play at Alton on Thursday, then return home on Saturday morning to play Normal Community in an 11 a.m. kickoff at Tiger Stadium. Anom knows that his side will learn from the loss and move along.
"We take this loss and we learn from our mistakes," Anom said, "and I think we move on and try to win all the games going forward. Just win these games."
There is the possibility that the Tigers and Kahoks could meet again in the IHSA Class 3A playoffs come later in October.
"That's right," Anom said. "We'll be ready. I'm just thankful for this team and I thought we did well today. I don't think it's something we should hang our heads too low about. Obviously, we took the loss, but I think there are some good things that came out of it. So we just move on and keep winning, doing our thing."
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