Steinmühlen Soccer Players Take First and Second Place in the City Finals of “Youth Trains for the Olympics”

Success for the Steinmühlen soccer team in Competition Class II: For the fourth time in a row, the team secured a spot in the district tournament by winning two games at the city championships. The Steinmühlen soccer players first faced the team from the Emil-von-Behring School. They won that match 1–0. Their next opponent was the Elisabeth School. The Steinmühlen soccer players also secured a victory in that game, which ended 2–1.

While the Steinmühlen soccer players were clearly superior to their opponents last year, that dominance wasn’t quite as evident this year. “This was due to the higher quality of the other teams this season,” coach Michael Neirich explained. In their first game against the Emil-von-Behring School, the Steinmühlen team was slow to find their rhythm and created relatively few scoring chances. The victory—which was nonetheless well-deserved—was ultimately secured by a penalty kick.

After switching their formation, our soccer players dominated the second game against Elisabethschule and managed to hold off Elisabethschule’s equalizer until just before the end. With the other two schools tying 2–2, the Steinmühlen team ultimately became the undisputed city champions with a 5-point lead.

In Competition Class III (born in 2004 and 2005), the Steinmühle team was defeated by the Philippinum High School team. The city team was packed with top players from VfB Marburg and SF Blau-Gelb Marburg. In their head-to-head matchup, the Steinmühle players, coached by Dirk Konnertz, lost quite decisively, 0–3, due to a few lapses in concentration; however, they won the other two games convincingly: 2–0 against the Elisabethschule and 7–1 against the Emil-von-Behring-Schule. In the end, they finished in second place out of four teams—a great success!