By Bruce Karnick

The Raider Boys have continued to improve over the last few weeks and won another match last week against South St Paul, 3-1. The win improves their record to 3-6-1 on the season, 3-1-1 in the last five games.

It was 0-0 at the halftime break. Head Coach Jamie Swanson talked about the first half, “We were a little frustrated in the first half because we created a decent amount of quality opportunities, but just couldn’t knock one in. The halftime speech was about patience and playing relaxed, and that is how they came out. Sometimes things don’t go a team’s way for periods of time, but as long as we trust our abilities and are confident in themselves, we will score goals.”

They did just that. Coming out of the second half #20 Danny Millner Scored on a header from a great cross and play by #10 Colby Donnelly. The second goal came from #13 Matt Qualy about 10 minutes later. “They countered with one, then we scored our third goal. [#4] Josh Corneya was involved in a play close to goal and they ended up scoring an own goal to finish the scoring,” Swanson added.

The Raiders travel to Henry Sibley to play North on Wednesday, October 7th. Coach Swanson gave a preview of that match up, “We’ve been on a good run of form, even in the loss to Simley. So we are looking to give North St. Paul a competitive match. They beat us 6-0 in the first meeting of the season, but we’ve grown together and improved since then. A win would put us in a good spot to get a better seed in the section playoff that starts the 14th.” Swanson is right. The first five games of the boys’ season, they were 0-5. The bigger tale of that is the score differential. The Raiders were outscored 27-2 in those first five games. In the last five games, not only have they gone 3-1-1, but they have also outscored opponents 16-8. A combination of more aggressive offense and a much better defense has helped turn the season around for the Raiders. Good skill boys and keep up the winning momentum!