Winning the St. Albert Women's Soccer League championship Sunday completed the most successful season in Mavericks 09 history.
Winning the St. Albert Women's Soccer League championship Sunday completed the most successful season in Mavericks 09 history.
The 20th win in 20 matches for the Alberta Soccer Association Tier 3 gold medallists was the 2-0 decision against the Morinville Ladies for the division one playoff cup at Forest Park field.
Two years ago the Mavericks finished 19-1 overall after beating Morinville 4-1 in the final.
“This is the first season we've ever gone undefeated. We've won provincials and now we've finished winning the league so it's just a great way to start our indoor seasons. Hopefully we can keep the momentum going,” said centre-midfielder Andrea Noppers after team's 11th shutout in SAWSL and provincials combined.
However it wasn't easy for the Mavericks, 16-0 in SAWSL with 111 goals scored and only nine against. A solid Morinville side handcuffed the Mavericks until the 65th minute when Noppers capitalized on a corner kick.
Mavericks veteran Lindsay Hornung sealed the deal in the 80th minute with her first goal of the season.
“All of our games this season haven't been quite this competitive so it was nice just to play a game where we really had to fight for it,” Noppers said. “It was a tough game all the way to the end and we really had to work hard to get those goals and finish with the win.”
Morinville played the Mavericks tight defensively while generating only a handful of chances throughout the contest.
“It was a really tough game. Both teams showed up to play,” said Morinville goalkeeper Danielle Lafond. “I felt we had a lot of pressure on our half but defensively we did pretty good. The fact that we made it through to the half without any goals against was nice but we would've preferred goals from our end though.”
Previous results against the Mavericks were losses of 4-1 in the single division format and 7-0 in division one.
“We were definitely in it for marking up better. The games before our headspace wasn't quite there where we didn't mark them as tight. They also like to shoot really high outside the box so we were shutting them down there,” Lafond said. “We definitely came into the game knowing that we wanted to fight for it instead of actually let it pass.”
The difference between the two halfs for the Mavericks was accuracy, according to Noppers.
“In the first half we just weren't taking the opportunities that we had. We weren't shooting when we were in the backs and we were trying to make the perfect pass and the perfect play,” she said. “Finally, in the second half, we started to get a little more greedy and started taking the shots so we were able to finish a few.”
Noppers spoiled Lafond's shutout bid as the second Maverick to get a foot on the ball after Morinville was unable to clear a tricky corner kick.
“I was just in the right spot at the right time. My team did all the work and I was just there to finish it off in the corner,” said Noppers of her low shot from in tight.
Lafond touched the ball more times than her teammates as the final unfolded but was unlucky on both goals.
“The first one with the corner kick it was kind of a weird scramble. I should've just jumped on it but what do you do. The second one (Hornung) was just open for a killer shot right in the middle,” Lafond said. “Out of the two I probably could've got the first one.”
At the other end of the pitch Chelsey Marques, a speedy forward who was in net for the final, made a couple of quality saves as the Mavericks concentrated on stopping Suzanne Douziech, a dangerous striker who ran away with the single division scoring race with 20 goals.
Morinville finished the SAWSL campaign at 12-3-2 after the latest in a long line of losses to the Mavericks. The last time Morinville knocked off the Mavericks was 2011, a 5-2 result that secured a spot at the Tier 4 provincials and first place in the division one table.
“It was a fairly successful season. We were more of a cohesive unit coming into the playoffs. Even with the 2-0 loss it doesn't feel like we ended up on a low note by any means because we did come out and gave them a good fight,” said Lafond, 23, who broke her ankle in the Tier 3 provincial bronze medal game with the Mavericks last year in Calgary and wasn't in net when Morinville lost the SAWSL semifinal 4-2 in overtime to SA Force.
The Mavericks improved on last year's 16-3-2 overall mark, which included a 3-2 loss in the final to SA Force, who are no longer in the league.
“We gelled really well as a team. The passing was really, really good, we were connecting and we were talking all the time. It was really a team effort,” said Noppers, 24.
The former Wolves FC premier player and first-year Maverick is among roughly six players who joined the team after the Mavericks split into two SAWSL teams in 2009. There are still a few original Mavericks kicking around with the 1995 side.
“I knew a bunch of the girls before coming onto the team so I was pretty excited to play with them. It wasn't really hard to fit in. Everyone meshes really well together so it was nice to join a team that was working so well together,” Noppers said.
