Pronghorns soccer women earn a point
It wasn’t their best outing and there was an unfortunate bounce near the end, but the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns women’s soccer team didn’t come away emptyhanded.
Looking to solidify their spot in the Canada West post season dance, the Horns battled the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack to a 2-2 draw during league play Saturday afternoon in Kamloops.
The Pronghorns looked poised to come away with the trio of points, but one bad break opened the door for the WolfPack to strike for the equalizer.
“We didn’t play particularly well,” said Pronghorns head coach Fred Trinh. “We had the lead until 10 minutes (remaining). It was a bit of unfortunate call. One of the players backed into Jesse Dueck and elbowed her. She went to cover her face and the next thing you know the ball hits her in the face and drops right into her hands. It looked like she just did an over-theshoulder catch. (Penalty kick) and it was tied 2-2. It’s not her fault.”
After the WolfPack scored first just one second shy of the 19-minute mark, Kayla Blacquiere scored her third of the season a little over three minutes later and added her fourth in the 68th minute for a 2-1 lead before the TRU struck for the game-tying goal in the 88th minute.
“My message to the girls is we still control our own destiny,” said Trinh, whose team is now 4-5-2 and can lock up a playoff spot with a win over the UBCO Heat this afternoon in Kelowna. “We didn’t play well today and we need to put that one behind us and move forward and make sure we come out tomorrow and win. That’s the bottom line.”
“We won the first two and then lost the third and fourth sets. But it was nice to finish. We probably should have been able to keep our game up in the third and finish in three, but we had a lull so I’m glad we battled back in the fifth set.”
The Kodiaks opened with 25-20 and 25-18 wins before Medicine Hat forced the fifth set with 25-18 and 25-20 wins in the third and fourth sets.
The fifth set proved to be the closest one of the night before the Kodiaks dished out the winning point to secure the 2-0 weekend.
Like they did Friday night, Kristine Ward and Laura Serafini led in the kill department Saturday with 18 and 12, respectively.
Reina Hirata had 16 digs. Ward and Taya Mikado added 12 each.
The women’s and men’s teams are back in action this weekend in another home-and-home showdown, this time against the Ambrose Lions.
The first game is Friday night in Calgary before shifting back to the Val Matteotti Gymnasium Saturday night with the women’s game at 6 p.m. and the men following at 8 p.m.
“We’re definitely using the opportunity to figure out what we want to work on,” said Schwark. “So we definitely have a lot of improvements to make, I think defensively especially. But I’m pretty happy with it being weekend one. I don’t want us to be perfect, I want us to keep working over the season. I think it gave us a lot of opportunties to identify what we want to fix and I think we’re coming into a really good spot. So I’m really excited for the hard work the girls are going to continue to put in and the postive results we’re going to see. It’s really exciting.”
In the men’s game Friday, the Kodiaks were defeated 3-1 (17-25, 2521, 22-25, 25-27) by the Rattlers.
Kodiaks veteran Dax Whitehead paced the Kodiaks with 15 kills and Carter Hansen hit for 13.
Tony Albizzati, Marcus Biesheuvel and Whitehead each had 10 digs.
Follow @DWoodardHerald on Twitter