Just grateful to play

Don’t get the New Hampton soccer team’s seniors wrong, they want to win.
And in a way, they did just that on Thursday evening in Charles City. Yes, the scoreboard showed a 6-1 loss to the Comets, but the fact is the Chickasaws were playing a real soccer match on a real field and that was a huge victory.
“This is the best day of my life, I’m not kidding you,” New Hampton mid-fielder Ivan Camarillo said. “Just to be able to play the game I love and do it with a ‘New Hampton’ across my chest, wow, that was special.”
And the final score might beg to differ, but for much of New Hampton’s first-ever soccer game, the Chickasaws were highly competitive.
“I thought we played really well,” New Hampton coach Shannon Maas said, “and we also learned a lot. I was encouraged by the way our kids played, the way they stuck together and worked as a team.”
New Hampton fell behind 2-0 in the first 15 minutes, but freshman Carter Broughton took a pass from Dani Tinajero and buried the ball into the net with 16 minutes left in the first half to cut the Comet lead in half.
— For more on this story, see the April 6 Tribun