PCHS Miners boys soccer advance through state playoffs

Miners win playoff game at home, now onto the second round of playoffs. Photo: Jennifer Janssen

PARK CITY, Utah — On Friday, the Park City High School Miners boys soccer team beat the Mountain Crest Mustangs from Nephi 3 to 1 at home on Dozier Field. The Miners eliminated the Mustangs and advanced through the Utah state playoff tournament.

The weather was mostly sunny, the polar opposite of the freezing temperatures the Miners played in earlier that week. In 100% precipitation, they also won that home game 3-1 against Tooele. Parents were plentiful on Friday, May 9, after mostly staying home and watching the livestream of the previous match, which had been downpoured and drenched. 

The above video taken on Friday shows the gritty goaltending from freshman Logan Cadman. Viewers can see after the admirable action of him jumping up into crowded airspace, he hits the ground, and stays down for a the remainder of the video. What isn’t seen here is the refs paused play as Miners athletic trainer Chris Antinori ran to his aid. However even as that was occurring, Cadman, who is also an elite skier in the sport of nordic combined, sat up, then stood up, literally shaking off having the wind taken out of him, and with ref’s and Antinori’s thumbs-up, got back into his goal to make multiple, stellar saves.

Senior Nicolas Janssen scored the first goal on Friday for the Miners with 21 minutes and 2 seconds left in the first half. He’ll be playing soccer in college in California next year.

At the half, it was 1-1 when two minutes prior, a yellow card was issued to a Mustang player.

The Miners then made it 2-1 with 7 mins and 21 seconds left in the second half with a goal scored by Alan Marin.

With 3 mins and 44 seconds remaining in this first round playoff game, the last one seniors will play on their home turf, Sawyer Moran added a third Miners goal to the scoreboard. 

Both the rainy game versus Tooele and this game were come-from-behind wins at 3-1, something head coach Anthony DiCicco is okay with but is continuously communication with the student-athletes to ideally even out a bit at team trainings, dinners and other team building activities.

One of those team building activities happened without the knowledge of the team’s seniors but with the knowledge of their parents when the JV team’s players secretly decorated the senior varsity team’s cars.

At Friday’s game against Mountain Crest, junior Quinn Kelly who play’s forward, experienced a lower leg injury. Again Antinori sprinted onto the field to administer any needed aid. Kelly was completely able to jog off to the sidelines of his own volition. Kelly returned to the game after about ten minutes rest. 

Antinori was sandwiching soccer at 4 p.m. between baseball at 1 p.m. and lacrosse at 7 on Friday. He told TownLift, “Yes, it’s a long day but it’s a typical day for Park City High Athletics Department in the spring, bustling with playoff prowess.”

He’s also available during school hours working with the nursing staff. If Antinori wasn’t at these three aforementioned games, he’d be supporting his son, Tanner, a junior at PCHS at the Mountain Bike Team’s annual Bike Swap.

He continued, “I’m lucky to be a part of our own team behind the teams as we work collaboratively having a great network of our school administration and our physicians as well as the Orthopedic Partners over at the Intermountain Health Park City Hospital along with our PT clinics around town including Mountain Top Physical Therapy.”

Antinori concluded, “Everyone contributes to the benefit of the kids. I may be the person who’s the athletic trainer here but it’s a group effort in the community to make sure these players stay healthy and stay in the game.”

Next, the overall 9-9 boys soccer varsity team play in Orem, against Orem who are at 12-3 overall on Tuesday, May 13 at 4 p.m. in the second round of the playoffs.

The winners of that game advance to another match, then the winners of that go on to play in the Utah Monarch’s Zions Bank stadium in Salt Lake Valley. The Utah High School boys soccer state championship game will be held in Sandy at the the Major League Soccer REAL Salt Lake stadium.