ESA Complex – The fifth provincial medal in seven years for Mavericks 09 was golden.
Natalie Miller’s fifth goal of the Tier 3 championship was the decisive 1-0 winner against the Rangers Royals of Calgary on Sunday afternoon as the St. Albert Women’s Soccer League team wrapped up the round-robin tournament with a first-place 3-0-1 record as the Fair Play Award recipients.
Miller buried the gold-medal goal in the 77th minute by cutting hard to the net from the right side with a defender struggling to stay shoulder to shoulder with the power forward before unleashing a cannon of a shot that was waist-high into the far side of the net.
“Usually I’m pretty subdued when I score but that was a good one,” said a giddy Miller over the goal that had Mavericks’ fans hooting and hollering from the sideline.
The Mavericks diligently worked the ball towards their most dangerous scorer and the determined Miller was not to be denied.
“I was just thinking I need to win this ball. I took it down the side and I knew I could beat her and I wanted to. I had room and I got a big shot off,” said Miller, 34, who tied for the tournament lead in goals. “It was just a grind that game. Everyone worked so hard so it felt really good to score for them. To be able to put all of that effort and buildup into something like that and finish felt really good.”
A tie or loss would have put the Mavericks (9 GF/2 GA) in a tough spot to win gold with the Rangers Royals and Sherwood Park Phoenix Reserves, the Edmonton District Soccer Association No. 1 rep at provincials, facing off Monday to close out the round robin. The teams soldiered through a 2-2 draw as Sherwood Park finished second at 2-0-2 (8 GF/3 GA) and the Rangers Royals placed third at 2-1-1 (11 GF/5 GA).
“This was our gold-medal game. We definitely went into it thinking that way because the way the round robin is set up it helps us think it’s all in our hands. If we lose a game we might lose a medal that way and this was our last game,” said Christina Cleland, a hybrid left back/midfielder.
Visit www.stalbertgazette.com to view the team picture.
This is the first provincials the Mavericks competed in a round-robin format instead of pool play to determine the medal finalists.
At previous Tier 3 tournaments, the Mavericks were awarded bronze last year in Calgary, silver in 2016 and gold in 2014 in Edmonton and in 2012 were Tier IV bronze medallists.
The Mavericks also placed fourth in Tier 3 in 2013 and 2015 in Calgary.
A sense of urgency engulfed the Mavericks as the match wound down with the Rangers Royals and a scoreless draw looming large before Miller relieved the tension.
“I like games like this because it’s such a tight game and you never know which way it’s going to go. It brings out the best in both teams,” Cleland said. “But it’s also fun to be winning and not worry about a goal getting in.”
Going for gold
The Mavericks tried in vain to grab the match by the throat in the early stages with several quality opportunities with Miller and Suzanne Schulz spearheading the attack but the finish was lacking.After withstanding the initial onslaught, the Rangers Royals pressured the Mavericks in spurts as the teams traded chances before halftime.
The pace quickened in the last 45 minutes as the Rangers Royals targeted Natalie Smith, the tournament’s top goalkeeper, with a number of shots and the Mavericks kept pushing the ball in deep with Chelsey Marques coming close a couple of times and Miller was also bringing the heat.
“That seems to be a Mavericks thing. We tend to come out hard at the very beginning and then we slow down once we get used to the game a little bit and then we realize we can’t do that and we need to push again. So it’s kind of a cycle that we go through as a team and it seems to be quite often that happens,” said Cleland, the team’s corner-kick taker who would often set the ball up for Miller or Lindsey Hornung to lob a shot towards the cluster of bodies in front of the net.
Day 2 of provincials for the Mavericks kicked off with the 4-0 decision against 1-3 Wind SH (10 GF/11 GA), the EDSA No. 2 rep and division 3A (11-2-1, 47 GF/19 GA) leader.
Cleland, 28, opened the scoring, Schulz potted a pair and Crystal Smith also tallied in support of Smith’s second shutout.
“We were first to every single ball and they just didn’t stand a chance with us getting there,” said Cleland, a fourth-year Maverick with previous ties with the Raiders, Warriors and Victoria programs, plus the St. Francis Xavier High School soccer academy.
The first game was in the rain and wind Saturday morning against first-place division 3B Sherwood Park (12-1-1, 67 GF/10 GA) and neither team found the back of the net.
“It was a good game. We enjoyed the competition,” Miller said. “It was a little bit frustrating for us just to sort of put things together with the weather."
The Mavericks dominated the second half with all sorts of top-notch scoring plays by a variety of players and best of the bunch were by Miller and Hornung.
“We put together a lot of passes but we weren’t finishing,” Miller said. “We felt like the better team but we weren’t quite connecting things.”
In the 54th minute, Miller was awarded a penalty shot when she was chopped down in the box while cutting through a defensive pairing and on the attempt struck a straight-ahead ball that glanced off one of the outstretched arms of the goalkeeper and it deflected off the crossbar and back onto the field.
“A couple of (SAWSL) games ago I got one that kind of got through the middle there but she made a good save,” Miller said. “It was one of those things where our defence was doing so great and all we could’ve asked for was to put it away for them but I just couldn’t.”
Scoring spree
The next game Saturday was 4-2 over the winless Tigers FC (3 GF/20 GA), as Miller scored a goal for all four of her children.“After the first game I needed to sort of finish and not let low, especially with the way the tournament is. You’ve got to finish goals. It’s a round robin so if it comes down to goals for and against we need them,” said the SAWSL’s leading scorer with 15 goals.
The fourth marker, a two-on-one rush with Hornung as the decoy on a play eerily similar to the goal against the Rangers Royals, was the most memorable one.
“Once I got kind of near the side and I felt like I could just beat her,” Miller said. “I do get a little anxious about when it’s too open but that one I felt like I was able to finish it strong and not overthink it.”.
The Mavericks led 2-0 at halftime but the Tigers (16-1-1, 94 GF/14 GA), an Atterbury Tier 4 EDSA team, roared back to close the gap in the 49th minute and then made it 3-2 in the 80th minute.
“We know at any point a goal can change a game so in the second half when they scored right away it was sort of a moment of like, 'OK we’ve got to buck up.' We all sort of felt that because things can change so fast, so we kept pushing and pushing and our defenders did so great in just like stopping everything,” said Miller, who restored the Mavericks' two-goal margin in the 54th minute on a scramble in tight of the net to the side while hooking the ball in through traffic as she was falling to the ground.
The Mavericks are the runaway leaders in the six-team SAWSL at 12-0-1 (75 GF/8 GA) with one match left before the playoffs start.
“There have been a few games that have been good challenges for us as teams have stepped up, not that they don’t ever, but for sure they gave us a run for our money,” said Miller, an Edmonton Christian High School alumna who has previous playing experience with the Raiders, Angels, Juventus, Northwest United and one season with the MacEwan Griffins.
“This year, more than maybe in a few past years, we’ve felt that one goal could turn a game so knowing that as we’re preparing for provincials we take that into our games more than maybe we would’ve a few years ago when we weren’t always sure how provincials might go but we feel now like we can compete,” Miller added. “It’s not good enough to get to provincials; we really want to show up at provincials so we're doing things even in games that are not as close or whatever to keep us at hopefully a high level.”
