sports

EAST GRAND FORKS HOLDS OFF FIESTY CROOKSTON BOYS SOCCER COMEBACK IN SECTION TOURNEY

October 12, 2020

The Crookston Pirate Boy’s Soccer team played a terrific second half, but fell just short as the East Grand Forks Green Wave defeated the Pirates 2-1 on Monday afternoon in the opening round of the Section 8A boys’ soccer tournament.

FIRST HALF –
The Pirates got off to a decent start in the first half, keeping the Green Wave off the board for the first 10 minutes and getting a number of touches on the ball in East Grand Forks territory. However, it was the Green Wave who struck first as senior Kole Chupka scored a goal off of a strong cross pass from fellow senior Hamse Ismail, putting EGF ahead 1-0 just over 11 minutes in. Less than eight minutes later, Chupka struck again. After a goal kick from Crookston goalie Kaleb Thingelstad, the Green Wave’s Tommy Ellis got after a loose ball and found an open Chupka in the Pirates’ 18-yard box and Chupka was able to punch it in from just a few yards away, giving the Green Wave a 2-0 lead. Chupka, who didn’t play against Crookston last Tuesday due to injury, leads his team with nine goals scored in 2020. The Pirates kept the Green Wave scoreless the rest of the way, as EGF led 2-0 at halftime. “We had a couple of miscues on defense,” Crookston head coach Lon Boike said. “We didn’t cover Chupka very well on those goals. But we had five guys playing defense, so that helped us out a bit.”

SECOND HALF –
Crookston changed up their offensive formation to begin the second half, and it paid off especially early on. The Pirates were shooting and passing the ball a lot more down the middle of the field, getting a lot more touches near the Green Wave’s 18-yard box. Less than 10 minutes into the second half, the Pirates got on the board after senior Jacob Miller was able to sneak a ball into an empty East Grand Forks net after battling with a couple of Green Wave defenders. EGF goalie Jonah Tollefson came out of his own goal to try and pick up the ball, but that gave Miller the opening he needed, and the Pirates made it a 2-1 game. Miller ends the 2020 season with two goals scored. “We actually switched our formation to try and get some more offense going,” Boike said. “I thought we really did. Quite a bit of the action in the second half was on our end of the field, which was good. We went to a 4-4-2, so we had just four guys on defense, but we had four midfielders and that seemed to help us quite a bit. We just couldn’t find that second goal.” The Pirates did all they could to keep the ball on the Green Wave’s side of the pitch for the remaining 30 minutes, and got the ball fairly close to the net at times, but ultimately did not have enough looks late in the game to try and tie it.

The Pirates end the 2020 season at 2-9, but Coach Boike remains optimistic when he looks to the future of Crookston boys’ soccer. “We’re going to be fairly young next year with just three or four seniors,” Boike said, “but, I think we have some good, young kids that have been seeing some minutes at varsity time, so I think that’ll be good for us next year. I wish we had another month or so with these guys, because after a match like this, they kind of figured out that this is the effort we need to put forth to win matches. I’m not sure we always realized that during the season, so it was good to see that they came to play Monday and played hard. We got much better as the season went on. It would have been nice to have some more wins, but I was proud of this team and all of the things they accomplished this year.”

East Grand Forks improves to 8-2-1 overall and will host the #3 seed Bemidji Lumberjacks in the Section 8A quarterfinals on Thursday.