The Impact beat the Heat on Wednesday night and walked away with another win for the third place team.
The Div 1B St. Albert Impact women’s squad quenched the ASC Heat on Wednesday night at the ESA complex with a final score of 3-1. The win pushed the Impact up in the standings from fourth to third place before going in to a bye week.
The scoring opened early when the Impact’s Christina Malbrecht won the race to the ball and dashed past the opponent’s defenders. She easily dumped the ball in to the back of the net, giving the Impact a 1-0 lead.
The home team continued to come on strong, immediately generating another great chance off the opening kickoff, but could not manage to evade the goalie. Finally, after a few shots off the post, the Impact scored an insurance goal. Mackenzie Sharun dribbled and deked the defence and passed to Malbrecht who netted her second goal of the night.
Brooklyn Robert of the Impact followed up with the third goal for the team immediately after the kickoff, giving them a lead of 3-0.
“We were moving the ball and forcing the other team to chase and that makes all the difference in the world,” Coach Brian Murphy said. “Moving the ball quickly got the other team off of us and created lots of opportunities. They couldn’t handle the speed and having to chase the ball.“
The opponents got a chance for redemption late in the first half when a shot from the middle third of the field sailed high over both teams and brushed the tips of a jumping goalie’s fingers and landed in net.
The second half saw less action with both teams getting shut out and keeping the score stagnant for a final 3-1. Malbrecht was searching for the hat trick during the half, but continued to be thwarted by the post and couldn’t bury the ball in the net.
“Realistically, we had some great opportunities to finish in the second half, we just didn’t put the ball away like we did in the first half,” Murphy said. “If we put away a couple of those chances it was the same half as the first. We controlled the ball well and we had the ball a lot. “
Next week, the Impact women will take a break with a bye and are planning on practising to prepare for their next game.
“We had a really good practice session last Monday which showed up in the game today,” Murphy said. “It’s going to be a lot of quick touches and moving the ball quickly so we can do what we did in the first half today.”
The Impacts’ next game is a home game against the eighth place Angels Scottish Classics Div 1 on July 29 at 7 p.m. at Riel Park.
