Women get to scout ahead of semifinal game
The Medicine Hat College Rattlers women’s soccer team will be playing the waiting game at the Alberta Colleges Athletics Conference championship tournament today in Edmonton.
After taking the South Division’s top seed with an 82-0 record, the Rattlers earned a bye into the tournament’s semifinal round, giving them a chance to scout any possible opponents a day in advance.
“It’s really exciting, especially with how we’re set up right now going into the semifinal,” said Rattlers leading scorer Kaity Letwiniuk. “I think we’re ready for anything. We’ve taken on the losses, we’ve taken on the wins. We’ve done everything a team needs to go through to really push through the rest of the season and finish strong.”
The Rattlers split the first two weekends of ACAC play to open the season at 2-2-0, but it was the last time Medicine Hat would be on the wrong end of the scoreboard at the final whistle. The Rattlers avenged both losses and rolled through the rest of the season with six straight victories.
Coach Jim Loughlin says the team will keep a close eye on today’s match between the Olds Broncos and Grande Prairie Wolves at noon. While the Rattlers know what to expect from Olds after picking up 3-1 and 1-0 wins over the Broncos in the regular season, they’ve yet to get a good look at Grande Prairie’s style.
“We don’t know too much,” said Loughlin. “We have had a chance to watch them play once so you get a sense of what they’re capable of doing, but on the day they could have made tactical adjustments due to injuries or the opposition they’re playing so I think we’re going to get our best understanding of what they can and can’t do when we watch them play Olds.”
Medicine Hat’s talented squad of veterans boast a good deal of experience at the championship level, as many of the starting 11 played in the Canadian Colleges Athletics Association national championship when it was hosted at the Methanex Bowl in 2014. Now they’re hoping to punch their ticket to Montreal while staking their claim to the ACAC crown.
“They’ve lost at this stage and they’ve won at this stage. So they know what it feels like to do both and they understand and would all agree that the preference is to win,” said Loughlin.
“I know there are a lot of us who have been pushing for it. The fact that the last time we made it we hosted, we didn’t get to see the whole traveling part and I think that’s something we’re really excited about,” added Letwiniuk.