The Roanoke Rapids Men's soccer team traveled to battle the Clinton Dark Horses Tuesday night in the second round in the 2A NCHSAA State Championship play-offs.
Roanoke Rapids came up short falling 3-0 to Clinton finishing the 2016-17 season with a 16-7 overall record and 8-6 in the 2A Northern Carolina Conference.
Goalie Thomas Merritt had 13 saves at the goal.
Post match comments from Roanoke Rapids head coach Craig Jean, "My team played hard and gave 100% until the final whistle. They had some good chances early, but got beat by a more experienced (12 seniors) team. The field dimensions really gave them an advantage - it was extremely wide and we didn't take advantage of the space horizontally. We kept forcing forward with long balls instead of playing side to side and patiently choosing when to go forward while they tired us out by playing across. We had a couple of good looks early on and the game was back and forth for while, but the PK 30 min into half deflated us. We had some moments in the second half where we had good attacking bursts, but Clinton gave us very few good looks at the goal. I'm proud of my team's effort tonight & over course of season. We are losing a great group of seniors that will definitely be missed. We have a lot of young players who had great seasons this year and haven't yet reached their full potential, so it should make us even stronger next year. I'm looking forward to it. We will take a couple of weeks off and then get back to skill work and trying to get bigger faster stronger in weightroom. I've really enjoyed this team and the season we had. I would like to thank the parents and fans for their support this season and also RRSPIN for being the only local media outlet to provide our coverage"