The first place St. Albert Impact Women’s Soccer Club saved their best game for a rainy day on Monday night. They pulled off a win in the closest game of the season against the second-ranked Crestwood Soccer Club.
It was a wet and rainy contest Monday night when the division 3A Impact beat Crestwood by a score of 2-1.
“Under the circumstances they were slipping and sliding everywhere and their passes weren’t right on, but they did the best that they could with the circumstances,” Coach M.J. Carroll said of her team. “Luckily we held it together.”
Just a few minutes had gone by when Chloe Schmaltz beat the Crestwood keeper and opened up the scoring for the Impact. St. Albert continued to work the Crestwood defence, spending most of the first half in the offensive zone, despite the soggy and slippery conditions. The weather was not the only problem St. Albert faced on Monday.
“We were missing our top goal scorer and two of our main defence players,” Carroll said. “We were short three players altogether.”
Near the end of the first half, Crestwood got a break when Ayla Cugan beat the Impact defence and netted their first point of the game.
The Impact came out strong in the second half, dominating possession and spending most of the time passing around the offensive zone. Despite their best efforts they could not crack the Crestwood keeper.
“The other team would have three of them on us and cluster us and gave us no room to move out there,” Carroll said of the Crestwood defence.
Finally, with less than five minutes left in the game Mickel Yuzdep of St. Albert slipped by the Crestwood defence and hit the back of the net for the game-winning goal.
“We kept the formation right so we ended up with a game winner luckily,” Carroll said. “Position-wise we really spread the game out even though they were trying to cluster us in the middle. We were trying to keep the ball to the sides so that we could have room to move.”
The St. Albert Impact has yet to lose a game this season. They had come off a 13-1 win against the Wind LWA on Saturday. Their next game is against fourth place NE Falcons FC on June 6 at the Kirkness Park in Edmonton.
