Lucas Punkari
When the Muskie boys’ soccer team first met to prepare for the 2012 season, the number-one goal they had in mind was to do the same as what they had accomplished the previous year—capture the NorWOSSA crown and make another trip to the all-Ontarios.
The black-and-gold did just that last Wednesday afternoon at St. Francis Field here, edging the Dryden Eagles 1-0 to win their second-straight league championship and earn a trip to OFSAA in North Bay.
“I’m still trying to absorb everything all in right now as I have such a mix of emotions,” Muskie head coach Shane Beckett enthused after the match.
“I’ve never had so many butterflies in my stomach leading into this game, and this last week has been just torture heading into the [playoffs],” he admitted.
“It’s always tight in the finals, and we talked to the guys before the game about coming out of the gates flying, which they did.”
“Right now this feels great,” smiled Grade 11 midfielder Cam Gobeil, who scored the lone goal in the opening minutes of the match.
“We’ve been planning on accomplishing this all season long,” he noted. “And as a rookie, I came in here trying to prove something.
“So that’s why I think I feel really good right now, along with our whole team.”
Having earned a bye straight into the final by virtue of finishing atop the three-team loop during the regular season, the Muskies struck at the two-minute mark of the first half when Gobeil blasted a shot into the back of the net.
“It all started off if a free kick that we had,” he recalled.
“The ball came across and [Brandon] McGinnis got a head on it.
“Then it hit off of one of their defenders, and I was able to come over and volley the ball right past [Eagles’ keeper] Carney [McConnachie],” he added.
It also was Gobeil’s third marker in two games as the first-year player made an immediate impact since being put into the lineup during the team’s final regular-season contest May 23 in Kenora against the host Broncos.
“I’ve been trying to work my way up to the top after starting on the bench,” Gobeil noted.
“I was able to come on and get a couple of those goals in my second game against Kenora last week, and [Coach] Beckett said I was looking good in warm-ups before the game, so I was happy that he started me,” he smiled.
“Cam has been electric on the practice field before getting into the starting lineup for us,” Beckett explained.
“We had seen him play before in the men’s league here, so we knew the type of player that he was when he tried out,” he added.
“With the work ethic that he shows in practice, we couldn’t wait to get him out on the field and show what he can do.”
The Muskies continued to push the pace of the game throughout the rest of the first half, as well as in the early stages of the second, with Gobeil, McGinnis, and Colton Spicer all having chances to further extend the lead.
“We wanted to come out flying in both the first and second half,” Gobeil explained.
“We didn’t want to have the mindset that we were already going to OFSAA, so we knew going in that we needed to work hard in order to achieve our goals, and we were able to do that.”
However, the final 22 minutes of the game provided some anxious moments after the Muskies were forced to play with only 10 men on the pitch after Spicer was handed a red card at the 58-minute mark—forcing Beckett to switch up his strategy.
“In my brain, I had about 100 adjustments that I thought we would have to make after Colton got sent off,” he admitted.
“But in the end, we ended up making none and just played without a striker up top.
“We gave a little more free reign to the outside midfielders [Gobeil and McGinnis] to try and take away a bit of our pressure in the midfield,” Beckett explained.
“And towards the end of the game, we brought [Brandon] Sinclair back a little bit so that we could have five men at the back.”
Spicer’s abrupt exit from the game also gave a bit of hope to the Eagles, who finally had a number of chances to get the ball into the Muskies’ end.
“As soon as they weren’t playing with a striker, we elected to play three strikers up top in order to create some more opportunities,” said Andy Bartlett, who was filling in for regular Eagles’ coach Conor Doherty.
“Even though we fell behind early on, it’s a long game and you just have to be patient,” he stressed.
“So we kept trying to stick to our game plan throughout the game, and that was to just get the ball up the field.”
Although the Eagles controlled the ball more often in the final minutes of the game, Dryden’s one quality scoring chance was cleared out of harm’s way when defender Tim Metke blasted the ball out of the 18-yard box before striker Richie Callewaert could take a shot at Muskie keeper Scott Parsons.
“Callewaert is a guy who only needs to have the ball one time to score a goal, and that is something we saw all season long and in their [3-1] win over Kenora in the semis [earlier Wednesday],” Beckett said.
“In those final minutes, and during the game itself, the guys at the back did a great job to shut him down and to not give them enough space,” he added.
With a second-straight league title in their back pockets, the black-and-gold now are on the road for the OFSAA ‘AA’ championships, which get underway tomorrow in North Bay and run until Saturday.
Seeded fifth in Pool ‘A’, the Muskies will open play at 9 a.m. (EDT) against the Cardinal Carter Cougars (Leamington), with their second game slated for 1:30 p.m. versus the St. Mary’s Huskies (Toronto).
Then on Friday, Fort High will hit the pitch at 9:30 a.m. against the Prince Edward Panthers (Picton) before concluding their round-robin schedule with a 2:00 p.m. clash against the St. Thomas Aquinas Raiders (Oakville).
The top two teams in each of the four pools advance into Friday night’s quarter-finals, with the semi-final matches slated for Saturday morning.
The gold-medal game will be played that afternoon.
After failing to get out of the group stage at last year’s all-Ontarios in Windsor, the goals for the black-and-gold this time around are simple.
“Our plan is to get out of our pool, win one game in the playoffs, and go from there,” Gobeil remarked.
“We want to have fun while we are there, of course, and with this being my first time going there, it’s going to be very exciting personally,” he added.
“But our game plan is to compete and not to go there and be a whipping boy for everyone else.”
