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ST. JOHN’S PREP SCORES LATE GOAL TO BEAT PIRATE BOYS SOCCER

August 25, 2022

The Crookston Pirate Boy’s Soccer team did about everything right except put the ball in the net as St. John’s Prep defeated the Pirates 2-1 in a season opener for both teams on the College of St. Benedict Field in Collegeville.

“This is the best game we’ve played to start the season,” said Crookston head coach Lon Boike in his fourth year at the helm.”
Crookston won only one game last season and opened up with a 3-0 loss to the Johnnies last year in Crookston to open up 2021. “We feel we had a great pre-season practice and looked much improved from last year. Both teams came out feeling each other out, but then we started showing our speed, but missed some great chances.” St. John’s Prep would start the scoring with the only goal of the first has when Islas put a long and high lob shot toward the Crookston net and Pirate goalie Blake Melsa ran back and it was just out of his reach and dribbled in the net for a St. John’s Prep 1-0 lead. “We picked things up after that goal,” said Boike, “our strikers and midfielders moved the ball down the field, but we missed on some passing and hit two posts in that first half.” Shots were even at 5-5 in the first period. “At the half we told the team that we needed to improve on our passing game. Our speed with Carter Trudeau, Caden Boike and our midfielders were driving down the field to give us a lot of opportunities, but no goals to show for it. We had to improve our play making ability when it presented it’s self,” said Lon Boike.

Early in the second half, the Pirate struck when Caden Boike received a pass from his right from Brandon Colborn in the middle and Boike and he went lower left to make it a 1-1 match with just over 54 minutes left in the match. “It was a nice play with Brandon’s pass exactly where Caden wanted it and he beat the goalie to the left.” For the next 20 minutes or so the teams played back and forth, but again the speed of the Pirates showed up and again created a number of grade A chances, but three more goal posts, two of them in the last minutes, to keep them off the scoreboard. “Our intensity was good, our defense was fine and our speed was outstanding. “One of the officials, who does a lot of officiating in the St. Cloud and area said that he’s hasn’t seen that kind of speed from midfielders in quite a while,” said Lon Boike. With 11:42 to go in the match, St. John’s Prep’s Eli Perry got in close and was able to sneak a three footer past Melsa to give the Johnnies the lead again 2-1. “We finished those last 12 minutes with high intensity and really put pressure on, but they played some good defense and we just could take advantage of some of those late opportunities,” said Coach Boike.

St. John’s Prep improves to 1-0 on the season while opening with a win over the Pirates for the second year in a row. “It was a really good match for us and well played by both teams. A good way to start the season,” said Boike.
Crookston drops to 0-1 on the year and will play three games next week, at Fergus Falls on Monday night at 7:00 PM, then home against a tough Bemidji team on Tuesday and hosting Melrose on Thursday. “It’s a busy week,” said Boike, Bemidji is real tough, but I think we have a good chance to get two or three wins next week.”