Shawnee Mission West's Caroline Ewing, left, kicks the ball past Free State's Apryl Hedges. The Firebirds fell, 3-0, Thursday at Free State.

Free State High soccer coach Jason Pendleton constantly yelled one word to his players throughout their 3-0 loss to Shawnee Mission West on Thursday – “unlucky.”

“I think we created some of that bad luck for ourselves, in the sense that we had opportunities to make plays that we normally will make, and should make, and didn’t,” Pendleton said.

Pendleton’s word especially rang true in the first goal scored against FSHS (0-1-1) in its home opener. Goalkeeper Megan Hrenchir lost the handle on a shot on goal and accidentally kicked it in herself.

“You just have to compete no matter what the circumstances are,” Firebird defender Clare Robinson said. “Sometimes you get unlucky like that, and that wasn’t Megan’s fault or anything. We just stuck together afterward. I thought the effort was there. We competed, but it definitely wasn’t a 3-0 game, I don’t think.”

Free State held tough after the goal, holding SM West scoreless for the next 48 minutes, but the Vikings did come close on several occasions. In one instance, FSHS defender Amanda Vervynck tracked down and kicked away a ball trickling toward the goal.

“Our kids are really buying into what we’re trying to accomplish in terms of a group effort, and we want to win, but we recognize that success is going to be a result of us playing hard and doing other things, and we’re always trying to think about the next play,” Pendleton said of his team’s resiliency following the early goal.

“We’re going to move on and control the controllable. As a history teacher, I can teach about mistakes and how we try not to fall in that trap, and as a soccer coach, we’re just trying to move beyond the mistakes that we’re making, correct them in practice and focus on the next play.”

Ten minutes into the second half, Hrenchir came out to grab a ball booted deep into the Firebirds’ side of the field. Unfortunately, Shawnee Mission West’s Kristen Griesner got to the ball first and dumped it into the open net.

Three minutes later, a kick angled from the side of the goal deflected off Hrenchir’s hands and in for the Vikings’ final score.

“You could argue that all three of their goals were a direct result of individual mistakes we made, more so than they were results of anything dynamic or fantastic they did,” Pendleton said. “But that happens. Good teams make you pay when you make mistakes, and they’re a good team, and they punished us for that.

“As I told the team, against really good teams, we’re not good enough to where we can make a lot of errors. So we’ve got to just minimize our errors and execute when it’s appropriate.”

SM West dominated the ball, giving FSHS very few chances to get shots off.

“They’re extremely athletic, and we didn’t do a great job connecting passes. We just panicked when we got the ball because they’re so athletic,” Robinson said. “But that’s something we’re definitely going to work on, connecting passes in the midfield and connecting from midfield to forwards – just the progression from the defensive third up to the offensive.”

Next up for Free State is a match with crosstown rival Lawrence High on Tuesday at Youth Sports Inc.