Hard Road to Nationals

The Lakeland Rustlers path to the national men's soccer tournament is now three times harder. 

After a 2-0 victory over the Olds Broncos last Saturday, Lakeland needed a win or a draw against the SAIT Trojans to clinch first in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) South Division and more importantly, a first round bye at the ACAC championships. 

However, SAIT would get the better of the Rustlers in the final regular season game, defeating Lakeland 3-0 to take the top spot in the South Division.

It drastically changes the outlook for Lakeland heading into the ACAC championships, as the first round bye would have meant Lakeland would need to defeat their semi-final opponent, likely NAIT, to go to nationals, as the Keyano Huskies, who are hosting nationals this year, are likely to make the final and would grant the other finalist team a pass to nationals as well.

Now Lakeland needs to win three games, win gold at provincials, in order to make it to nationals, as they will take on the Concordia Thunder in the quarter-finals, and would have to face Keyano in the semi-finals before having to win the final.

"We definitely didn't deserve anything better than what the result was," said Rustlers head coach Kevin Wagner after Sunday's loss to SAIT.

"First loss of the year. If you include the pre-season, it's our only loss of the year. We should rebound. We'll play Concordia, then Keyano and have to win the final, but they are all teams we can beat."

Lakeland has struggled over the last four games, largely in part to an injury to lead striker Troy Trench, who leads the ACAC with 10 goals this season, but hasn't scored since Oct. 1 after sustaining the injury during the 1-1 draw with Medicine Hat.

While the road may now be three times longer, Lakeland still has a chance at playing for a provincial championship. They will just need plenty to go right for them in both the attacking and defending third, their goaltending will need to be better than it was against SAIT, and if they do enough to earn some luck, they may find themselves where they expected to be all along.

"We have to be good, we have to be confident," said Wagner. "We have to be good in both of those to create enough luck. If we don't work hard enough and do the right things, we won't create enough luck. In the game of soccer it's a saying, it's not us getting lucky, it's you do enough things right and that would be helpful."

Despite the loss to SAIT, Lakeland was upbeat and not hanging their heads. They are still one of the top teams in the ACAC and across the country, and with only one blemish on their record, no one is counting out the Rustlers yet, even if the road has got extremely harder. 

But Wagner said the team isn't naive. They know they made things harder on themselves and now they have to rise to the challenge if they want to win Lakeland's first provincial soccer banner and get into nationals.

"They understand they have made things more difficult, but they also understand we still have a chance," said Wagner. "We're not done yet. We're going to work."

Andrew Brethauer
The Lloydminster Source
www.lloydminstersource.com

Posted:  November 1, 2016