Muskie boys win ‘C’ title in Winnipeg

One team’s relegation is another team’s devastation.
After winning the Winnipeg high school soccer invitational tournament last year, an untimely loss left the Fort Frances Muskies playing for the ‘C’ division title at the same event last weekend.
And they vented their anger at their fate by manhandling Tec Voc (Winnipeg) 3-0 in the ‘C’ final Sunday afternoon.
Jeremy Wilson notched a pair of goals while Matt Basaraba, who felt he could have capitalized several more times, netted the other one.
“It was great to be able to put rookies like Shaun Egan and David Fagerdahl in to get some playing time, and to see them play very well,” said Muskie boys’ head coach Rick Chambers.
“We were as good as many of the better teams down there.”
There was no shortage of drama in the Muskies’ opening 2-1 victory against River East (Winnipeg), which was decided in a spine-tingling penalty-kick shoot-out.
The Muskies connected on all three of their shoot-out opportunities to clinch the game but the star was goalie Dan Poperechny, who made a pair of saves that had Chambers’ jaw on the ground.
“On their second shot, which was headed to the lower left-hand side, Dan dove and just got a hand on it,” Chambers recalled. “Then on their third, going to the lower right side, Dan just got in front of the shot in time.
“Those were two unbelievable saves.”
Wilson, who had scored in regulation time, ripped the decisive shot past the River East keeper after earlier shoot-out markers by Basaraba and Tyler Barker.
But in their second game against Glenlawn (Winnipeg), the Manitoba squad jumped on a Muskie defender’s soft pass back in his own zone and drilled a shot past Poperechny for a 1-0 victory.
“We definitely did a good job carrying the play,” said Chambers. “But they got a hold of the loose ball and put it in.”
The loss was costly, as combined with River East’s regulation win over Glenlawn, it was enough to leave the black-and-gold in third place in their three-team pool and drop them down into the ‘C’ division.
That laid the groundwork for a semi-final meeting with Maples High School (Winnipeg), which the Muskies dominated early en route to a 3-1 win.
“The only goal they got was from a ball that skipped off Andrew Curr’s head and right to their player, who put it in the net,” Chambers noted in summarizing an otherwise perfect defensive effort.
Basaraba scored twice in that one while Bryan Chambers added the other marker.
Chambers said he likes how his team is coming together heading into the second NorWOSSA seeding tournament this weekend in Dryden, with the NorWOSSA playoffs set for May 14-15 in Kenora.
“The way we’re playing right now, there’s not a team [in NorWOSSA] that can beat us,” he remarked.
< *c>Raiders romp
Meanwhile, the Muskie girls’ squad saw enough of Oak Park to last them for quite some time as the Raiders nailed down two wins against the black-and-gold in a girls’ tournament in Winnipeg, including a 3-0 victory in the semi-finals.
“They’re a really strong team, and they were up three before the game was 20 minutes old,” Muskie head coach Struchan Gilson said about the Raiders, one of the top-ranked teams in Manitoba at the end of last season.
“But we settled down after that and didn’t play too badly,” he added. “We learned a lot about who can do what, and we re-designed our midfield schemes to help our difficulties.”
The Muskies, who were without Rebecca Cornell and Katie McTavish (basketball commitments) for most of the tournament, were blanked 1-0 by Oak Park to open play.
The black-and-gold went on to bomb St. John’s Ravenscourt 4-0 led by Carling Barton’s two goals. Nicole Rogozinski and Kate Basaraba added singles.
But the Muskies’ troubles returned against the host team from Kelvin High School as they fell 3-1. Sarah Barton, set up on a terrific pass from Rylee Broman, had the lone goal.
Gilson, whose team also will head to Dryden this weekend for the second NorWOSSA seeding event after going 4-0 in the first one here two weeks ago, said despite his team’s 1-3 record in Winnipeg, the tournament there was not as high a calibre as in recent years.
“We wanted to come here [Winnipeg] and play better teams than we’re used to seeing in NorWOSSA because that will only help us get better,” he reasoned.