The regular season is over for the Raiders soccer teams, and both are preparing for the Section 3AAA tournament. Testing his prognostication skills, Boys Head Coach Jamie Swanson was asked about the section seeding.

“It’s all going to be dependent on Eastview and Rosemount. It looks like they are probably the top two teams. Eastview beat Rosemount, so that headtohead is in their favor. If I were to speculate, based on probably two matches left, I'd say we're probably going to get the seventh seed and facing the number two,” he said.

Swanson was right. The Raiders landed the seven seed. They faced the secondseeded Eagan Wildcats at Eagan on Tuesday, Oct. 10. The girls earned the six seed and faced the Eastview Lightning in Apple Valley on Oct. 10 as well. We’ll have those results next week.

This past week, Hastings had two games for the boys and one for the girls. The boys took on St. Thomas Academy (STA) on Tuesday and both teams traveled to Mahtomedi to close out the regular season on Thursday.

Against STA, the boys fought extremely hard, bouncing back from each score the Cadets produced.

“That was a wild game from like the first 10 minutes,” laughed Coach Swanson. “I had a feeling it was going to be wild, and a lot of wild stuff happened on both sides. The unfortunate thing is, I think St. Thomas had a little bit more of the wild in their favor a couple of their goals in the second half. I felt like we probably could have done a little bit better defensively, in the midfield making sure that we tidied up balls coming through because they had a couple of speedy guys that they were getting through us a little bit too easily. But a lot of that stuff starts in the middle of the field, and we just weren't able to deal with it quite well enough.”

STA had the lead 21 at the half and Hastings tied it up when the Cadets keeper misplayed the ball, and Jed Carlson took advantage. The Keeper went to pass to his defender and did not see Carlson to his right. Carlson intercepted the pass, deked the keeper and easily hit white lace to make the score 22.

That on its own was one of those wild plays that Coach Swanson was referring too, and shortly after, the Cadet’s wild showed up. A corner kick for STA turned into a beautiful header goal giving the Cadets the 32 lead. A few minutes later, the Raiders tied it again, this time Xavier Beal was in the right position with the Cadets keep misplayed the ball again allowing Beal an easy goal.

Less than a minute later, STA made a run toward the Raider goal and put it out of bounds. Chase Harder had a deep goal kick that was misplayed by a Raider midfielder and STA recovered it quickly. A long pass back toward the Hastings goal gave an STA forward a chance for a wild and perfect header that arched over Harders leap.

“Like I said, there was just a lot of weird, wild things that happened. I mean, for lucky goals, I think we were probably even, and they just earned one more and that was the one that was a bit of a backbreaker because that one came right after we scored on one of those wild goals too,” added Swanson.

The fourth goal by STA was the final goal of the game. Both teams had many additional scoring chances but just could not find the back of the net. With the loss, the Raiders fell to 34 in the Metro East Conference and 312 overall.

Against Mahtomedi, it was more of the same, many scoring chances with nothing going in thanks to solid play by both keepers and the first half ended in a 00 tie. The second half, each team scored one with the Raiders goal coming off the foot of Sebastian Straus. Unfortunately for the Raiders, that was the only goal they scored in a game that went to overtime but ultimately ended in a 11 tie leaving Hastings with a regular season record of 341 in the MEC and 3121 overall.

Raider girls The Raider ladies fared far worse in their one game last week falling 40 to the Zephyrs. Mahtomedi took an early lead going up 30 fairly quickly in the first half.

“We learned a lot from our loss to Mahtomedi,” explained Girls Head Coach Paul Armstrong. “They came out of the gates full tilt and that took us by surprise. That can't happen anymore. We've given up too many goals in the first couple of minutes this year. That has to change. We played much better in the second half and improved throughout the game. We proved to ourselves we can play with the best teams in the state if we play hard as a team.”

There is a lot of good talent on the Raider roster. Girls up and down the list that can individually play better than average soccer, and when they play as a team it shows. That team mentality will be needed if they hope to take down the number three seeded Eastview Lightning. Hastings played the Lightning for the first game of the season and the first game of Coach Armstrong’s time here at Hastings, losing 50.

“We've grown a lot as a team since our game of the season against Eastview. We now understand our system and style and what we want to do with the ball. We also know the type of game it takes to pull out a good result,” added Armstrong.

Both the boys and the girls have an uphill battle ahead of them to make it to state. Three wins against increasingly more difficult opponents. But the playoffs are a new season, everyone starts 00 and both teams, with a little luck a lot of teamwork, have a chance to be Cinderella stories.

(25) Austin Miller, (26) Xavier Beal, (7) Sam Sanchez, along with others led the late game onslaught to tie the game up against Saint Thomas Academy. They produced multiple scoring chances but were stopped by stellar defensive play. Photos by Bruce Karnick