Elian Martinez succinctly described his emotions following Discovery Canyon’s match with Doherty:

Neutral.

Martinez and the Thunder boys soccer team hoped for a victory Wednesday at Pine Creek High School, but settled for a 1-1 draw against the Spartans.

“It’s bittersweet, but at least it wasn’t a loss,” Martinez said. “We’ll learn from our mistakes with this one. It’s tough because there’s more to learn from a loss than there is a tie. But we can’t do much about this now. We just have to move on to the next match.”

The Thunder (2-4-1) entered the match having dropped their previous three matches to the Spartans (1-2-2) and hadn’t beaten Doherty since 2019 when Discovery Canyon earned a 5-3 win.

Doherty battled to make it four consecutive wins and struck just five minutes into the match.

After failing to score in its previous two contests, Doherty’s Kaleb Grajeda took the Spartans’ third shot of the game and fired it toward the Thunder’s net.

Grajeda’s shot skipped past the keeper and gave the Spartans a 1-0 lead with 35:29 on the clock in the first.

“We’ve been struggling to score goals up to this point, so it was great to see that shot go in,” said Doherty coach Adam Foulk. “I thought we were going to build some momentum off of that and you could see it happening. If we got that second goal, the flood gates would have started to open. But we’re not that cold blooded yet. We let people off the hook too much.”

That showed in the 14th minute when Martinez knotted the contest at 1-all.

Martinez bolted downfield, led a Spartan defender to the right side of the pitch and kicked the ball past the defender, the goalie and into the back of the net for the score.

“My teammate had it and I knew what to do with that,” Martinez said. “I called for the ball, kept my composure and scored it. When they took that lead, we weren’t concerned because we knew we could score and we did.”

Then, no one did.

In the final 65 minutes of the contest, both teams couldn’t get a shot into their oppositions net.

For the second half, both teams totaled seven shots and four on goal.

“Again, we have to learn from our mistakes,” Martinez said. “I thought we were going to get another goal but, hey, we didn’t. We just have to work harder on the field.”

While Foulk, who has seven freshmen playing varsity this season, hoped his team blossomed after scoring an early goal, he’s still grateful for their play.

Minus Grajeda’s strike against the Thunder, the Spartans had scored four goals in their previous four matches.

All of which came in a 4-1 win against Palmer on Aug. 30. But the silver lining for Foulk is his young squad continues to stifle opponents.

Doherty allowed just one goal in its season opener and Lewis-Palmer scored a pair of goals late in their contest. Palmer Ridge failed to score against the young Spartans.

“I have to give my guys credit, I have three freshmen playing on the backline,” Foulk said. “Two of them are freshmen center backs and we’ve only given up 5 goals in five games. That’s not very typical for young players.”