The Western Nebraska Community College women’s soccer team realizes that close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades and the not soccer field after falling in a hard-fought contest with No. 8 Laramie County Community College Tuesday afternoon at the Landers Soccer Complex.
The Cougar women game up a goal within the first two minutes and that was the difference in the 3-2 defeat to the Golden Eagles.
The Cougar men also gave up an early goal to Laramie County Community College Tuesday afternoon, but WNCC never was close in falling 5-0 to the Golden Eagles.
WNCC coach Todd Rasnic said that his ladies team ran out of gas against a faster LCCC team.
“I think we played a bad game tonight. We had too much time off between contests and I saw that fitness dropped a bit and we weren’t able to leave our starters on as long as we would liked,” Rasnic said. “It is unfortunate to have the layoff, but we needed it because of the CU tournament that we played in, we played four games and got pretty beat up.
“They got that early goal, which caught us off guard and after that we shut them down a bit. We still have some work to do. We are trying some different looks. I think we learned a lot tonight [about LCCC] and we will go back to our training to formulate a line up that will be necessary to win in the Region IX playoffs.”
LCCC scored 1 minute, 57 second into the match on a goal by Michaela Boyd. That was the only goal of the half as the Golden Eagles took a 1-0 lead into intermission.
Rasnic said that early goal was a difference.
“The truth is we played a quality match for about 25 minutes and that is the bottom line. We have to play 90 minutes at full speed and full pace and control the match and we didn’t do it,” he said. “When you don’t do it against a top team, you lose. That is the way it is. Our ladies know that and they know they have some work to do and these games will not just drop in their lap and they need to get out here and work like the champions I know they are. I think you will see them bounce back from this and put some good soccer on the field in the next few games.”
In deed the Cougar women did bounce back in the second half. After Boyd scored with 39 minutes to play in the match to put LCCC up 2-0, Ashley Quintana quickly changed the complexion of the match, netting a goal at the 36:22 mark. In fact, Quintana’s goal came off a ricochet off LCCC goal keeper Emily Michna for the goal.
The Golden Eagles went up 3-1 with 22 minutes to play on a goal by Samantha Larson that just sailed over Cougar goal keeper Terri Huntington’s out-stretched arms.
WNCC sliced the lead to one on a beautiful goal by Jaimie Gastelle. Gastelle took a pass from Laura Abbott and placed the ball perfectly in the top center of the net for the score.
The Cougars had three other prime scoring opportunities to tie the score, including two with under five minutes to play, but their shots were just off line.
Huntington recorded eight saves in net, while LCCC’s Michna had five saves. WNCC had nine shots compared to LCCC’s 12.
The men’s contest turned out not to be even a contest as the Golden Eagles scored early and often to vault to a 3-0 lead at halftime. The Golden Eagles scored their first goal just a minute into the match as Romeo Kabanda scored off an assist from Alex Post. Kabanda quickly made it 2-0 at the 38 minute mark when he scored off an assist from Shane Brown.
Later, LCCC’s Adrian Beckham scored off another Brown assist for the 3-0 lead.
LCCC added two more goals in the second half. Tyler Arbuckle had an unassisted goal at the 23:32 minute mark of the second half. LCCC added another goal with 8:20 left to play.
WNCC did have some scoring opportunities, including four shots in the first half, but only could get three shots in the second half. LCCC didn’t have that many shots either. They, in fact, were just 5o percent for the game, making five of 10 shots.
Cesar Bazana recorded eight saves in net for WNCC.
The Cougars will be back in action Saturday when they travel to Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs, Wyo. The two teams will then be back at Landers Soccer Complex for their home finale on Sunday against Dodge City Community College with the women’s match starting at noon and the men’s match at 2 p.m.
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