sports

CROOKSTON BOY’S SOCCER COMES UP SHORT IN LOSS TO FERGUS FALLS

August 28, 2021

The Crookston Pirate Boy’s Soccer team started strong, but Fergus Falls netted a couple of late first-half goals to propel them to a 4-1 victory over the Pirates in an early season game played in Crookston. “We are seeing a lot of promise so far,” said Pirates Head Coach Lon Boike.

FIRST HALF
The first half started fast with both teams having a couple of opportunities to score. Fergus Falls got on the board first with one of their less promising pushes. Shane Zierdan found himself with the ball near the corner of the field and sent the ball towards the ball and curved it into the far side of the goal to give the Otters a 1-0 lead eight minutes into the game. “I thought it was a nice kick. He somehow curved it around and got it just inside the pole,” said Coach Boike. “I’m not sure what we could have done differently there… maybe have another guy back there.”
Crookston continued to put pressure on the Otters defense and it ended up paying off. After a throw-in and a kick up the field, a goalie misplay gave Jack Everett a wide-open net, and he dribbled it in for the Pirates’ first goal of the season. “We were kind of subbing out a group and subbing in a group and that second group did a nice job of getting the goal,” explained Coach Boike. “Jack had the whole net he was staring at so we were just telling him to shoot it.”
It looked like the game would head into halftime at a tie game, but Fergus Falls netted a couple goals late. The first goal came with just under two minutes left. A corner kick was knocked around a couple times and fell right to an Otters’ player, Aiden Shern, who kicked it in to give Fergus Falls a 2-1 lead. 90 seconds later, Crookston failed to clear the ball out of the box and Jose Rodriguez kicked it in off a Pirates defender to make it a 3-1 halftime lead. “You gotta play start to finish… yeah it was unfortunate,” added Coach Boike. “We will have to work on our corner kick defense.”

SECOND HALF
Fergus Falls started off right where they left off in the first half and scored their fourth goal a little over three minutes into the half. Aiden Shern completed the stretch of goals with his second of the game to make it 4-1. “We talked about things at halftime and we wanted to come out and get that first goal because 3-2 is a whole different ball game,” explained Coach Boike.
The rest of the half was scoreless as both sides played solid defense and good goalie play to thwart any offensive chances. Crookston’s Thor Harbott was all over the field on the defense, stopping any ball in front of him and anything behind him. And Caden Boike played aggressively from his goalie position to prevent many more shots on goal. Crookston had a few shots in the second half, but they also missed out on a few opportunities where they did not get the shot off in time. Coach Boike knows that will come with time saying, “We were still playing our game and work on some things. We have a lot of kids and some of them haven’t played soccer before. They are good athletes and are learning the game,” added Coach Boike. “We have a lot of young guys too so we are just going to keep improving.”

Crookston falls to 0-2 and will host Melrose on Thursday.
Fergus Falls is now officially 1-0 on the season because of a halftime postponement in their opening game against Melrose.