When the season schedule was released this summer, the eye-catching addition was today’s match-up against Kent’s JV team—a new opponent for Deerfield’s Boys Thirds. The Lions did not disappoint, bringing tons of speed and aggressiveness to the game played on their home pitch against the early foliage of the rolling hills of Litchfield County. Our offense showed itself to be good students of the skills we had been drilling all week, running around Kent by keeping the formation wide and moving the ball with one or two touches. Thirteen minutes into the match Kent succeeded at doing something our previous opponents had not: scoring on us. But the unfamiliar feeling of being down did not dampen DA’s spirits. We redoubled our efforts, got to every ball first, kept the game on their half, and started giving ourselves chances. At 26’ a Kent handball gave us a penalty kick, and left winger Howard Jin ’27—with ice in his veins—didn’t miss. Ten minutes later, right winger Ari Baharani kept his focus during a scrum in the box and sent a shot low right to make it 2-1. The offense kept up the energy in the second half, energized by striker Jack LaRovere Abrams ’28, middie Vail Brokaw ’27, and the relentless veteran PJ Pirsch ’28. With some better breaks, Deerfield could have scored several more goals, but our top scorer Cole Higgins ’26 made it 3-1 by bodying in the ricochet after a beautiful shot by Pirsch at 79’. Our defense, featuring injury-replacement Jerry Du ’27 at keeper, played beautifully, with the dynamic center-back duo of seniors Rich Zhou and Magnus Selvig repeatedly reversing Kent’s attacks. The coaches are excited to see how much better this focused team that’s hungry to learn can get. We’ll start to find out with a tough week ahead, welcoming NMH to Deerfield on Wednesday and heading to Wilbraham Monson on Saturday.