By Bruce Karnick

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As it has been all year long, both the boy’s and girl’s soccer teams have travelled a similar path. The final regular season game was no different. Mahtomedi came to town on Thursday night and first up were the girls at 5:00. The boys took the field at 7:00.

Girls head coach Scott Meier summed up the night well, “You know, we talked about, kind of pregame, what we wanted to work on and what we wanted to, what we felt like we could do, or what we needed to do in order to keep the game close. Pull things better for us, but it just didn’t happen. They jumped on us right away early, and we just, we never got off the mat, you know? They gave us a couple of jabs, and we just, it rocked us a little bit. And I think we just, we lost, we lost our flow, and we lost, we just lost our I don’t know, our vibe and we just could not get it back with what we tried to do. It just was unfortunate. That’s not how we wanted to leave the field last night. For sure, especially with the crew we got in the crew that we’ve had over the years. We were looking for something hopefully more to culminate with. We wanted to be able to have a good feeling leaving the field last night, and it just it was really unfortunate.”

When the final score is 7-0 and your team is on the wrong side of that loss, it is never fun to relive the goal-by-goal recap. Mahtomedi controlled the flow of the match and Hastings didn’t have an answer for the team’s final home game of the season. The Raider sideline was filled with tears with after knowing it was their last time on Todd Field as a team.

“It’s emotional for a lot of the kids, especially for the seniors. The reactions are a little bit different from player to player. I expressed my disappointment and sadness [to the girls] and things like that. It was obviously not the outcome we wanted,” added Meier.

The girls finished the team meeting as one, their final home rallying cry was simple. One, two three… “FAMILY!”

Meier recapped the season talking about their big, season defining type wins against teams like Tartan, or the ties against South St. Paul and Simley. The big win against North and the heart breaking loses against others.

But that is all behind them and the new season started Tuesday night at Rosemount.

The boys game at 7:00 started off completely different than the girls. By the time the first half was over, The Zephyrs had the lead 2-1. Head Coach Jamie Swanson talked to his guys about keeping up with what they had done in the first half.

“We thought we were going to have about the same second half as we did the first, the only problem was they converted on more of their chances than they did the first half. they had some good players that you know, there was a free kick that got bent to the corner it was they just converted better. To win against a quality side like Mahtomedi or Hill Murray, you got to have a little bit of luck and we didn’t get that. Our goal was to finish. Finish the games, finish the season, just finish. I thought they finished without getting their heads down. There are things that can happen when you get down. You can mentally check out, those things didn’t happen, we just got beat 7-1,” explained Swanson.

Again, a loss like that needs no further explanation, especially with the season starting over now that playoffs are here.

“I guess I’d rather not play Apple Valley again, but if we do, we do,” quipped Swanson.

Sorry coach, you’re headed to Apple Valley Tuesday, so what are you telling the guys headed into the playoffs? “We go back into the not-so-distant past we lost in overtime against North St. Paul three years ago. We lost the last second to Park two years ago. White Bear like last year was a little different story but there’s players that were on those teams here. And they remember what the intensity level was like. Now it’s the playoffs in every sport. It’s do or die, and I think there’s more than a few of them that understand what that means. We’re gonna let them chat before the game and get the guys up because, to be that close two years in a row, they felt that> they felt like they were going to win. And when you feel that, and you get the other guys on the team feeling that anything can happen. And then maybe that luck comes a little bit, you know, on our side. You know Park last year was an eight seed. They made it to the conference final. So, it just depends on everybody being on the same page, arrows going in the same direction, and I’ll take that team, no matter who it is.”

There are two important pieces to this season for both soccer teams. Neither team quit. That says a lot about the character of the players and coaches, they never gave up. Second, he Raiders had plenty of games that could of and should have been won by Hastings, it just didn’t go that way. Plenty of games the Raiders out played their opponent, but it did not manifest in to goals or wins. In hockey, it’s called puck luck, and teams seem to have it, or they don’t. This years Raiders soccer teams seemed to not have soccer’s equivalent of puck luck. Whenever a ball would hit the goal post, it seemed to bounce out instead of in, or if a great shot was made by Hastings, their opponent made an even better play to stop the shot or tip it just wide. Countless times where fans looked on in shock that a ball did not hit the netting and it should have. This is how the season went for both the boys and girls.

With their regular seasons being done, it has been a pleasure to work with the kids, coaches and parents again. You all are the best part of this job and my wish for all of these great kids is the best in life, not just in sports. Hopefully the story can continue next week talking about four big wins in their matches Tuesday and Thursday this week, because at this point, it’s win or go home. GO RAIDERS!

Junior Keeper Chase Harder had a rough night in net replacing the injured Carter Homb. Harder faced a plethora of great shots, stopping many of them in the Raiders loss to Mahtomedi. Photo by Bruce Karnick