Southside boys’ coach Moodie Ihmeidan doesn’t believe the Mavericks are a middle of the road soccer team.

Ihmeidan believes the Mavs — who face 7A-Central co-leader Northside today at Mayo-Thompson Stadium — are much better than their overall 8-7 record suggests. The Mavs, 3-3 in the 7A-Central, beat Little Rock Central last week to even their conference slate.

“That’s all it is — they just have to believe,” Ihmeidan said. “We’ve got the talent, it’s just the mindset.”

Southside’s nemesis has been its inability to overcome early deficits.

“When we get down, we tend to get down mentally,” Ihmeidan said. “We lost 7-2 to North Little Rock, and we were only down a couple of goals and they gave up some goals. It’s a mental game. You have to keep playing, and that’s what we try and stress.”

Derek Gutierrez leads the Mavericks with 15 goals this season. Teammates Benji Flores and Dustin Lopez scored within a span of a minute at the 25-minute mark of the second half. Southside then played solid defense down the stretch.

“We’ve still got to learn to put games away,” Ihmeidan said. “We could have gotten one more, but we’ll take the win.”

Northside

The Grizzlies got a double dose of good news last Friday.

Northside came from behind to post a 2-1 road win at Cabot. In addition that same day, 7A-Central leader Little Rock Catholic lost to Conway, forcing a first-place tie between the Grizzlies and Catholic.

Both teams are tied in points for first place, but Northside coach Mauricio Maciel pointed out the Rockets are ahead in goal differential, which is a tie-breaker along with head-to-head competition.

The lone loss for the Grizzlies (11-2, 5-1) in the conference came at home to Catholic, and the two teams will square off down the road in Little Rock. But first things first for Northside, and that’s maintaining at least its share of first place as the Grizzlies get set to face city rival Southside at Mayo-Thompson Stadium.

“We want to make sure that we get better each game as really the conference games are preparation to do well in the state tournament,” Maciel said. “Southside is a good team and have the potential to beat anybody. We will make sure that mentally, we play hard right from the get-go and not wait until the second half to try to compete.”

Since the home loss to Catholic, the Grizzlies have won three straight matches, outscoring their foes, 12-2. Cesar Ramirez and Kareem Ihmeidan combined for six of those goals in that span.
