4A high school soccer: Mountain View holds off Olympus

OREM — After breezing through its first-round playoff game earlier this week, the Mountain View boys soccer team was put to the test in Friday's quarterfinal match.

Against unintimidated Olympus, the 4A favorite Bruins needed a full 80 minutes to get a 3-2 win and advance to the state semifinals for the third consecutive year.

Mountain View went ahead in the first 10 minutes and never relinquished the lead, but never got entirely comfortable, either, and had its back to the wall late in the second half. But the Bruins feel the game was good preparation for the last week of tournament play that will surely bring more tough tests.

"That's the type of game we want," said Mountain View coach Mark Graham. "This game was better for us than probably Wednesday's (first-round game) was."

Jake Parkinson led the way for the Bruins with two goals and an assist, bringing his scoring total to 14 on the season. As he does for most opponents, the powerful forward caused lots of problems for the Titans' defense and scored the eventual game-winning goal late in the second half. "Olympus came at us hard in the second half," said Parkinson. "We weren't quite prepared for it, but we still stepped up and managed to get the win."

The biggest play of the game might have been on the other end of the field when goalkeeper Graham Miller faced an Olympus penalty kick in the 14th minute.

Six minutes after Parkinson scored his first goal, Miller came off his line at an awkward angle and gave away the penalty by tripping an attacker. But he made up for the mistake by turning away the spot kick, giving his team a big morale boost.

"That save just completely changed the momentum of the game for us," said Parkinson. "They were down and we were still attacking."

Just over 20 minutes later, Parkinson played Renzo Sanchez through on goal, and the senior forward scored to make the score 2-0 at halftime. Olympus got a lifeline in the 51st minute when Clay Broadbent scored from a difficult angle, beating the keeper with a shot near the end line. Parkinson's game-winner came seven minutes later when he took a square ball from Josue Cisneros at the top of the box and curled his shot perfectly into the far corner.

Ben Hopkins scored the Titans' second goal in the 73rd minute, but Olympus failed to get an equalizer, with Zach Hart rolling an open shot wide four minutes later.

"We like to outscore people," said Graham. "We hope we can do it for two more games."