DES MOINES - The Kennedy boys soccer team ran into a buzzsaw Thursday at the state tournament in No. 1 seeded West Des Moines Valley. The Tigers ran away with a 5-1 victory in the first round of the state tournament at the Cownie Soccer Complex.

“Defensively, we just didn’t mark people,” said co-coach Steve Robertson. “It was a problem when we went and played them the first time (2-1 loss in April), we had some issues with that, but after that point it looked like we had worked that out. It came back today. We let guys run free and when you let a good team like that run free they are going to score goals.”

The Cougars' defense allowed a couple of early goals to the Tigers and after they got put into that early hole, Valley was able to push the advantage and expand the lead as Kennedy was pushing to climb back into it.

“If you get down by a couple goals in the first 15 minutes, you are chasing the game the whole time,” Robertson said. “When you are chasing the game, you have to take risks and do things that you wouldn’t normally do, and when you do that, you open yourself up defensively for more goals.”

Junior Gabe Christianson scored the only goal of the game for Kennedy when he put in a rebound off of Garet Christianson’s shot.

Robertson said he was disappointed with how the season ended, but thinks that Kennedy should be proud of it’s season.

“Mike (Robertson) told the guys, ‘Listen, this is going to suck for a couple days and it should, but with the exception of four other teams in the state, everybody else would like to be us,” Robertson said, referring to his brother and co-coach.

Kennedy finished the season 14-6.