Injury bug bites Rustlers

The Lakeland Rustlers are not ones to make excuses, but the men's soccer team wasn't anywhere near 100 per cent healthy at the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) championships this past weekend.

With injuries creeping up on many of the starters in the last half of the regular season, Lakeland went into their quarter-final match with the Concordia Thunder without the ACAC's top striker Troy Trench, while Quentin Dreaver, Justin Wurmlinger and Shayne Reaume were also nursing injuries that limited their effectiveness and amount of playing time.

Concordia scored in the second half, the lone goal in a 1-0 victory, handing Lakeland only their second loss of the season, but one that would eliminate them early from the provincial tournament and bring their season to an abrupt and disappointing end.

"It was a bad time of the year to come up with injuries," said head coach Kevin Wagner. "I generally don't make excuses, but it all happened at the same time. That, combined with two weeks of horrific training weather, literally shovelling fields before hand and training when cold, but the injuries were significant. Give them credit, they played and they tried, just bad timing for it to all happen at once."

Injuries began back on Sept. 15 against Medicine Hat, where Trench, who scored four goals the previous game against Red Deer, was injured and held off the scoresheet for the rest of the season.

Lakeland ultimately tied Medicine Hat, 1-1, missing two critical points in the standings, before defeating Lethbridge and Olds, but not without challenges of having to play players who weren't 100 per cent.

It set up Lakeland's meeting with SAIT in the final game of the season, where a tie or win would still give them the top seed in the South Division heading into the playoffs. But too many injuries left Lakeland in second place after a 3-0 loss, putting the Rustlers instead in a quarter-final match with Concordia.

"If you look back at the last four games, it was there," said Wagner. "We had some key situations where players were not at 100 per cent or close to it. It was the wear and tear on the compacted season and just unfortunate."

SAIT would upset NAIT in the semi-final game, and secure a spot in nationals as the Keyano Huskies, who are hosting the national tournament this year, also reached the finals and won the provincial championship game 2-0.

Concordia got to the bronze medal game where they upset NAIT with a 1-0 victory.

Had everyone been healthy, Wagner said it would have been Lakeland going to nationals instead, as the Rustlers would have had a bye to the semi-final where they would have played a beatable NAIT, who only defeated Medicine Hat before losing their next two games.

Instead they would have had to have won three straight games to go to nationals, which could have been done had the Rustlers not been nursing injuries.

"We definitely didn't have three games in us," said Wagner. "It would have been more disappointing had we been at 100 per cent and lost. The reality is, we were physically banged up and I knew going in that it was going to be tough."

Lakeland did end up winning six of 12 awards handed out for men's soccer, including Stefan Cukovic being named the ACAC Player of the Year. Wagner also won the South Division Coach of the Year award.

Cukovic, along with goalkeeper James Booth, defender Joshua Pynten and forwards Elijah Jennings and Troy Trench were also named to the all-conference team.

"We had a very successful season," said Wagner. "Never any internal turmoil, enjoyed each others time training. Just unfortunate in the end. With our top 11 healthy, this is the best team we've ever had. If we would have been healthy going into the last four games, it would have looked a lot different."