Niagara on a roll in college soccer
BERND FRANKE
With the cross country and golf seasons underway and with the basketball teams taking the court for exhibition games soccer is no longer the only game at Niagara College.
Yet, soccer players are once again the top kicks when the time came to select top athletes for the week ending Sunday.
Impressive winning streaks – five for the Knights men’s team, three for the women – contributed to the sport’s prominent place on the radar, as did the play of strikers Carlos Williams and Michelle Maecker.
Williams, a St. Catharines native and Governor Simcoe Secondary School alumnus in his third year at the region’s community college, scored two goals in a 5-1 victory over the Redeemer Royals and one in a win against the Lambton Lions, also by 5-1 margin, to earn male athlete of the week honours.
An unassisted goal 49 minutes into the Lambton game was the 13th of Williams’ career at and lifted him past Niagara alum Matt Miedema for the all-time lead in regular-season goals.
Maecker, this week’s top female athlete, continued a remarkable rookie season by scoring three goals in two games. The Fonthill native and E.L. Crossley graduate netted two goals in a victory over Redeemer, 6-0; and accounted for the only offence in a 1-0 defeat of Lambton.
Maecker leads the Knights in scoring with five goals and six games. She has found the back of the net at least once in the team’s three-game winning streak.
Her five goals in a season is the second most for women’s soccer at Niagara. Jackie Lawther set the record scoring nine during the 2015 season.
Maecker shared credit for her success with her teammates. She also pointed out she is working hard in practice to improving her game.
Five in a row
Make it five straight wins for Niagara in men’s college soccer.
A balanced attack — goals from five different players, three of them freshman — sent the Knights past the visiting Lambton Lions 5-1 and into second place in the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association (OCAA) West Division.
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