FRUITPORT - Every good team hits a lull at some point in the season.
That’s particularly true when it plays a lot of other good teams.
Such is the case with the Reeths-Puffer boys soccer team, which had been cruising along pretty nicely since the start of the season, scoring plenty of goals and winning a lot of games.
But the goals have disappeared over the past two games, including Saturday’s interesting non-conference showdown with undefeated Fruitport, which the Rockets lost 2-0.
It was the second straight shutout loss for R-P, which also fell to a good Hudsonville squad 1-0 on Thursday.
R-P's Saif Abunayla
Reeths-Puffer is now 6-4-1 on the season. After starting the season with four wins in five games, the Rockets have now lost four of their last six, with all four coming against very good opponents.
“You can’t win many soccer games if you don’t score any goals,” said R-P assistant coach Ben Ritsema, who was filling in for head coach Kody Harrell for one game. “These were both state-ranked teams that we played, but we want to get there, too, so we have to figure out ways to get more goals, for sure.
“But I also want to give credit where credit is due. Hudsonville has one of the best Division 1 defenses and Fruitport has one of the best Division 2 defenses, and they both have great goalkeepers too.”
Losing a few games in the middle of the season is nothing to be alarmed about, Ritsema said.
If anything, the recent slump provides a valuable challenge, to test the Rockets’ determination to leave bad games behind and find the winning edge again, Ritsema said.
R-P's Cohen Beck, right, tries to beat a Fruitport player to the ball.
“Losing brings out character,” he said. “We need to lean on each other, play for each other and keep battling hard. We know our season is not close to being done yet. This might bring out the best in us. Every team goes through it. We know what we need to work on.”
The sudden offensive power outage is not a catastrophe either, according to Ritsema.
A lot of it is patience up top, continuing the play the feet, and staying in the attacking third a little longer,” he said. “We maybe rush things a little bit. We just didn’t take a lot of quality shots today.”
The only two goals of the game came within the first three minutes, both from Fruitport’s Davis Johnson.
The first goal came just 2:14 into the game when Fruitport’s Grade Anspach sent a ball to the near post off a corner and Johnson knocked it home, getting Fruitport out to a very fast start. 
R-P's Andrew Eilers (4) advances the ball up the field, trailed by teammate Trent Plummer.
Just twenty seconds later, Johnson found the net again, this time with an assist from Jorge Burgos-Yack, and the scoring for the day was done.
“They went to the ball, they beat us, made a nice move, got a one-touch finish, beautiful,” Ritsema said about the first Fruitport goal. “The other one was just a great combo play – quick pass, quick pass, quick pass. and we just didn’t respond fast enough.”
The Rockets will return to action on Tuesday with a home game against Holland West Ottawa.