The U14 Fury Yorkton United soccer club just recently traveled to Regina June 18-20 to compete in the Queen City Challenge Cup tournament.
This time, the team consisted of 11 regular squad members and two guest players from the U14 girls' squad.
The first game was versus A.C. Pumas from Regina at 9:30 a.m., Saturday morning. Yorkton looked to be the better of the two teams as they took a 2-0 lead with goals from Matthew McKee and Garett McCallum.
But the Pumas were able tocapitalizebefore the end of the half to make the score 2-1 and then another before the final whistle to make the game a 2-2 tie.
U14 coach Chad Grodzinski said it wasn't the best playing conditions and hinted that the team may have been lucky just to earn the draw.
"Unfortunatelywe had a break down in the first half and some slippery footing caused by mud in the second half and that was enough to turn a win into a tie."
He said the Fury offence had some trouble in the second half finding the net but not the goalposts and crossbars as they hit three of them.
"We had a bit of bad luck and a few missed calls as the AC keeper handled the ball well outside his 18-yard box on two occasions but we had to look forward to our next games so the team remained positive."
Next up for the Yorkton squad was an afternoon date Saturday (June 20) in which they took on the SUSC Arsenic from Saskatoon.
Grodzinski interestingly enough pointed out that SUSC "had destroyed QC Green earlier inthe day 7-0 so we knew we were in for a real test in this game."
He mentioned to the paper that the Fury game plan was to play a defensive-minded affair and do whatever they could to limit SUSC's offensive output.
As if that wasn't enough, the Fury also needed to come up with a counter attack of their own, Grodzinski points out.
Things didn't go too badly.
"For the most part the Fury accomplished their goals but could not muster a good counter attack. We limited SUSC's chances but they managed to score two goals before the end of the half."
He said the second SUSC goal was a bad case of bad luck, calling it an "own" goal as a shot deflected off a Fury defender and into the Fury net.
In the second half nothing went right for Yorkton and Saskatoon added to their lead to win it 3-0, Grodzinski said.
"They were a real strong, real fast team team. It was a war out there. Even with the loss I was very happy with our play."
He said sometimes it's more important to be able to give a good team a good scare then to roll over and play dead while they make your team look bad.
"We limited their chances and gave them a real hard game. It wasn't an easy win for them. I'm happy with that," asserts Grodzinski.
The Fury had a few hours off before playing their third match of the weekend, another early morning start Sunday against the QC Green of Regina.
A win in this matchup puts the Fury into second seed and a very important spot in the finals."The YUFC Fury came out strong and had a number ofunsuccessfulchances before a break down in communication led to a QC breakaway and goal."
Yorkton again came back with chances on the QC goal but their shots found the keeper and not the back of the net.
A late-game goal put the game away giving QC the 2-0 win.
Upon conclusion of the match, Grodzinski said he felt bad that his team was denied a win (and a goal, too) but looked at it that his team was not as badly outplayed as they could have been.
"I don't think that QC was the better team out there. Wedefinitelyhad more chances but in the end it comes down to who puts those chances in."
It's also a matter of head games now too, suggests Grodzinski, adding that whenever the two clubs get together, everyone always knows somehow who the winner is going to be.
"QC is a team that always seems to beat us no matter how much better we play. I guess our day will comeunfortunatelylast Sunday wasn't it. I was happy with the tournament although we deserved some better results. I think we played better that some of the scores showed."
Due to the short summer season and lack of available players that was the U14 Fury's last tournament of the season. The team will continue to practice for the next two months as long as the rain stays away.
There will also be some exhibition matches scheduled in which the U14s should use to develop themselves a little further; hopefully they can carry that into the indoor season, adds Grodzinski.
