Wight is alright
UPEI gets chance at redemption in AUS soccer quarter-finals.
Dillon Wight sat out last season to have a chance to play for a national title on home turf.
The fifth-year UPEI Panthers fullback season was derailed by a pre-season hamstring injury. It limited him to four regular season games, but he’s back and ready to help his team this weekend at the Atlantic University Sport (AUS) men’s soccer championship.
“It’s unfortunate that it happened, but I’m back now,” Wight said before Wednesday’s practice. “It feels great and it’s good going into the weekend.”
The team left Thursday morning by bus to Halifax before flying to St. John’s, N.L., for the conference championship.
About a month after sustaining the injury, Wight came back and tweaked the hamstring. It sat him back a couple of weeks, but he sat out to let it heal, returning Oct. 17 against UNB. With four games in back-to-back weekends, the Charlottetown native said it is not on his mind.
“I don’t really want to be thinking about it when I’m playing,” he said. “If I an thinking about it when I’m playing I shouldn’t be on the field.”
One thing is and that’s winning a conference championship before hosting the nationals.
“With the squad we have, and the way we are playing coming into playoffs, I think the chances are really good for us to do well,” Wight said. “There’s nothing more than I’d like (than) to win an AUS championship.”
The team is not looking ahead to Sunday, knowing they play Acadia today at 2:30 p.m. The Axemen (6-5-2) handed the Panthers (5-2-6) their only two losses of the season, 1-0 in the first game of the season in Wolfville, N.S., and 4-1 on Sept. 27 in Charlottetown.
“The soccer gods have been good to us,” UPEI coach Lewis Page said. “They’ve given us the only team that has beaten us this year, so we have a chance at some redemption.”
He said the team tried some different tactical things in the second game that didn’t work.
“We’re more at the stage now where we’re going to have them worry about us,” Page said. “We know what we do well.”
The veteran-laden team finished fourth and took points from games with the three teams ahead of them in the standings. They have scored five goals against the top-ranked UNB Varsity Reds, who gave up six all season, and beat second-place Cape Breton 3-0 in the final game of the regular season.
“We just squeaked in there, but I think everybody feels we deserve to be there,” Cole MacMillan said. “I don’t think we were necessarily putting bad performances up, we were just getting ties. . . We weren’t on the good side of some of those outcomes.”
He said sweeping last weekend has the team on a high entering the conference championships.
“We’re peaking at the right time,” Wight added.