MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - Surrounded by his team Wednesday evening, McCallie soccer coach Chris Cushenbery made one final statement.
"I will get better."
The top-ranked Blue Tornado gave up a second-half goal on a long throw-in, and that was the difference in a 1-0 loss to Montgomery Bell Academy in the TSSAA Division II-AA state semifinals at the Richard Siegel Soccer Complex.
MBA (10-1-3) will face Christian Brothers in the state championship match at 2:30 EDT today.
McCallie finished the season 13-3-3.
"Today was a huge game for us. That's a quality team," MBA coach Chiles Cheevers said. "We stayed in the game, we persevered and now we try to regroup."
Last year Cheevers said he wasn't a fan of playing two hotly contested games on back-to-back days with a championship on the line. He reiterated that point Wednesday.
"I still don't understand how you expect young kids to play a semifinal and a final in 20 hours," he said. "That needs to change. For the standard of game we're looking for, I really feel it's not a good showcase, and you'll have 22 or so exhausted kids on the field and the performance on the field is going to suffer.
"That's my take on it, but we're happy to be there and we'll gladly take it."
It's a position Cushenbery wishes his team could be in after a battle between two evenly matched teams came down to making a play.
That play came in the 52nd minute and was made by MBA. McCallie was unable to clear a ball upfield, which resulted in a throw-in by the Big Red. The ball bounced around on the play, and freshman Henry Hylbert punched a shot in.
"We were trying to build it out, and we kicked the ball out of bounds," Cushenbery said. "They had the long throw and put a guy on the keeper, and he kept backing into Emerson (Brock) and backing into him."
Still, McCallie had its chances. Balls in the box. Shots knocked down by the keeper that the Blue Tornado were unable to follow up. They pushed numbers forward in an attempt to get the equalizer, which led to a couple more chances, but none of the opportunities resulted in a goal.
For the second consecutive season, McCallie's season ended in the semifinals with a loss to MBA. This one was much easier to stomach than last season's overtime defeat.
McCallie was led by a solid five-player senior class, but Cushenbery feels good about the prospects of the 2017 season with hopes that others will step up to replace those departing.
"I'm pleased with our performance," Cushenbery said. "The difference between winning and losing is so small. We had our opportunities today. You add up the little things and you win a state championship. How do we close the gap on those? How can we get better? How can I get better? Be a better coach, a better motivator, a better mentor for these guys? How do these guys give better effort, more focused effort?
"I thought this was going to be a rebuilding year after the losses we had last year. I hoped we'd be .500 by the time we got to state, and we've been fantastic. To get here and feel like the favorite, it's been neat to see what this team can do, but we know we have more work to do."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.