The Park Boys Soccer season did not go as planned but looking at the schedule and scores of each game, things were so very close to going the other way. Park’s Boys finished the regular season 2-9, their victories coming against White Bear Lake on September First and October Eighth against Irondale. The difficult, yet reassuring part to look at are the scores of the games. When you see a total of three goals scored all season before the 6-1 win against Irondale, you might be worried. What you need to also look at is the goals allowed. In the first 10 games, the boys only allowed a total of 13 goals. That is 1.3 goals against average.

They never allowed more than two goals a game all season, something Head Coach Andrew Bourgoine is quite proud of, “We are 2-9 but the record doesn’t show how great the guys have played this year. Out of our nine losses, seven of those have been one goal games. Every game has been close and competitive. Just finishing and scoring goals has been our biggest problem all year but I am hoping the Irondale game can get us going and going strong into section play next week.”

Bourgoine acknowledged the struggles of the season, “We only had 3 goals going into the last game of year vs. Irondale, so we have struggled to put the ball in the back of the net,” until Thursday, October Eighth’s last regular season match. “We finally started finishing tonight,” Bourgoine said proudly. The Wolfpack would triple their season scoring number by putting six to the back of the net in one game. Bourgoine added, “We finally started connecting on our crosses tonight. We practice them all the time, but they never seem to connect in games, tonight they did.” Goals and assists for the Wolfpack are as follows: Team Captain, #10 Hayden Boich- 3 Goals, #8 Josh Gutzman – 2 Goals, #9 Jacob West- 1 Goal, #23 Nick Lemire- 2 Assists, #3 Anthony Garofano- 1 Assist, #25 Jackson Nelson- 1 Assist, and #6 Isaiah Stokes-1 Assist. Keepers #1 Jakob Leonard and #0 Max Neitz, once again did their jobs with the help of the defense to keep the goals allowed low, only allowing one goal..

Park landed as the number eight seed in the 4AA Section playoffs and will travel to East Ridge on October 14th to take on the number one seeded Raptors at 7:30 p.m.

Photo by Bruce Karnick