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The Wildcats and Vikings soccer teams got together for their annual doubleheader clash last Thursday, October 1. This year, the teams played at Chisago Lakes High School. The girls’ game was a blowout, but the boys’ game provided plenty of drama.

Girls

The Wildcats scored on six of seven shots in the first half and went on to beat the Vikings 7-1. The first five goals for the Wildcats came from 30 or more yards out. The Wildcats dominated possession throughout the game, controlling the ball about 90% of the time.

At the six-minute mark, from deep in the Viking zone, Sienna Benson passed the ball back to Payton Pohlman 35 yards out in the middle of the field, and Pohlman ripped a laser into the upper left corner of the next to give the Wildcats a 1-0 lead. Ava Baumgart scored twice in a row in the ninth and eleventh minutes to give the Wildcats a 3-0 lead. Five minutes later, Mackenzie Leonhardt carried the ball down the left side into the Viking zone and passed it toward Emma Knabe in the middle. The ball deflected out to Autumn Lukkason in the middle of the field about 30 yards out, and her shot bounced past the Viking goalie to make it 4-0. Pohlman scored again from long distance in the 27th minute to make it 5-0. In the 33rd minute, Kendall Schmidt ripped a high shot from about 20 yards out. The goalie leaped and deflected it, but the ball still made it just under the crossbar to make the score 6-0.

The Wildcats’ leading goal-scorer, Emma Knabe, scored the Wildcats’ seventh goal in the second half. And Viking Kinley Barie lasered a shot from near midfield that got under the crossbar for a goal, enabling the Vikings to avoid yet another shutout. Barie stood out as the Vikings’ best player in the game.

Wildcat head coach Wayne Kugel said, “For me, it’s super exciting to see how well our players are connecting. And then they didn’t get greedy, they weren’t trying to shoot the goal in the second half when the opponent was struggling.”

Boys

With the game tied, Viking goalie Jackson Puelston stopped a penalty kick and the ensuing rebound late in the game, preserving the 1-1 tie between the Wildcats and Vikings boys. On the play leading up to the penalty kick, a Wildcat shot was headed for the next and the go-ahead goal, but a Viking defender swatted it away a few feet from the net. The referee, who struggled throughout the game, should have given the Viking defender a red card for the hand ball that stopped the goal, but refused to do so for a reason only he is aware of. But he did award a penalty shot. Fernando Saldivar Balbuena lined up to take the penalty shot. He kicked the ball along the ground toward the inside of the left post. Puelston dove and blocked the shot, and the ball bounced right back to Saldivar Balbuena, and he shot it right back at Puelston, who grabbed the ball to end the threat.

For most of the first half, the Wildcats dominated possession about 55/45, but there were no dangerous scoring opportunities for either team until late in the half. On the Wildcats’ first good scoring opportunity, Saldivar Balbuena scored the Wildcats’ only goal of the game in the 36th minute, and the Wildcats led 1-0 going into halftime. In the sixth minute of the second half, Viking goalie Puelston lined up to take a free kick from 20 yards behind midfield a few feet from the right sideline. He launched a monster kick that came down a few yards outside of the top of the 18-yard box. A Viking player trapped the ball, passed it to Colby Rafftery and Rafftery ripped it past Wildcat goalie Colby Underhill to tie the game at 1-1. Both teams had chances to score after that, but the goalies made saves and, after the failed penalty kick, the game ended in a 1-1 tie.

Wildcat head coach Matt Koehn said “Puelston is a force for the Vikings. He’s got long kicks and comes out and plays a lot of their free kicks. He’s a guy you’ve got to pull out of the net so you can get it back past him. That’s something we’ll have to plan for next time because my guess is we’ll get them sin sections. And our goalie Colby Underhill did a nice job, and he never played soccer before this season.”

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