Two weekends ago, (Jan. 13-15), the Yorkton United Bulldogs Under-12 boys soccer team travelled to the Annual Regina Soccer Association tournament in Regina.
On Friday night, the Bulldogs faced Aurora Athletics from Saskatoon in the first game of the round robin.
"Both teams came out defensively and there was no score by halftime. In the second half, Aurora started the scoring but this just woke up the Bulldogs offence," reports coach Andy Wyatt.
Yorkton scored four goals in the second half and ended up winning the game 4-2. Goal scorers were Jordin Rusnak with two and Matthew Cochrane and Jacob Pindus with singles.
On Saturday, the Bulldogs faced the top team in Regina, the REU Chelsea and the hard fought game ended in a 0-0 tie. Wyatt said he felt that the Bulldogs carried the play but couldn't score. "I thought our boys played a pretty good game and we put a lot of pressure on REU but we just couldn't find the back of the net. They had a very strong goalie and tough defenders".
The third and final game of the round robin was against another Regina team, ACFC Red. Offence was not a problem in this game. Yorkton led 2-0 at half but by the end of the game, the score was 9-0 for Yorkton.
According to assistant coach Dave Malinowski, this time, Yorkton was able to capitalize on their scoring opportunities.
"Unlike the REU game, we finished our chances and really played well offensively. A lot of different kids got on the score sheet and gave us the confidence we needed going into the semis."
Based on the round robin results, Yorkton finished first in their pool and played REU Predators on Sunday morning.
The Bulldogs came on strong at the beginning and hit the crossbar in the first minute. Most of the play was in the REU end but once again, near misses were the story of the day. REU had a 1-0 lead after the first half due to a Yorkton miscue on defence. In the second half, the bounces started to go Yorkton's way and after goals from Jacob Pindus and Jordin Rusnak Yorkton took the lead. More hit posts happened but Yorkton held on to win the semi-final 2-1.
This led to a finals match up with a very strong team from Humboldt. In the final Humboldt started strong and dominated the play for the first half. It was only the strong play of goalie Nicholas Fetsch and some timely saves by the Yorkton goal posts that kept Humboldt off the score sheet.
Though Humboldt outplayed Yorkton in the first half, the second half was a different story with Yorkton having a slight edge which led to the first goal of the game being scored by Jordin Rusnak for Yorkton early. Yorkton continued to play well but with five minutes left Humboldt scored to tie up the game. After 10 minutes of overtime solved nothing, the game went to a shoot out and Yorkton ended up winning 2-1 in the shootout to take the gold medal.
Coach Wyatt notes, "It was a great final game.
I thought throughout the tournament the boys controlled the games and outplayed the other teams but against Humboldt, we found ourselves being outplayed in that first half. Credit to Humboldt because they were a very good team. What I was very happy to see was how our boys responded to the challenge and how well they played for the rest of the game. After Humboldt tied up the game we dominated and rarely had the ball in our end. Matthew Cochrane hit the post in overtime and others had good chances while I don't think our goalie had to make a save at the end of the game. Both Matthew Mandziuk and Nick Fetsch scored in the shootout and Fetsch played great in goal to limit Humboldt to one goal in the 5 penalty shots they had."
The Bulldogs next game action will be on the January 27-29 weekend once again back in Regina. All of Yorkton's seven competitive soccer teams will be attending this tournament and hoping to represent Yorkton well.
