The Olds College Broncos soccer teams had mixed results in season-opening Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference games on Sept. 7 in Calgary against the SAIT Trojans, with the women tying 2-2 and the men losing 6-0.
Women's coach Mark Oxer said he was proud of the Broncos, who overcame a 2-0 first-half deficit to tie last year's ACAC bronze medal team. Jade Soluk and Nicole Badry scored late in the second half to give the Broncos the tie.
“I'm happy with that result. We were down 2-0 at halftime and so we battled back hard in the second half,” Oxer said. “We had three breakaways in probably the last seven minutes of the game and we just couldn't finish. It was really exciting that the girls worked that hard from 2-0 down.”
The game showed the tenacity of the players that the Broncos have this season, he said.
“The girls showed that (on Sept. 7), not willing to give up on the game and just playing for the full 90 minutes. That's how we're going to play our season is we're going to go hard every minute of every game regardless of the score and get the results that way,” Oxer said.
The Broncos will be without a few players heading into action this weekend as striker Dana Dunn suffered a concussion, while mid-fielder Shayla Meriam and fullback Melissa Carruthers both suffered quad injuries. While there is no timeline for Dunn's return, Oxer said Meriam and Carruthers will be able to recuperate while others who didn't play on Sept. 7 will fill their positions.
Meanwhile, the men's team was defeated by a powerful SAIT Trojans team that exploited the Broncos' inexperience. Only three members of the Broncos are returning players, with the others adjusting to the higher-calibre college game, said head coach Humberto Aspillaga.
“We need to be more aggressive. We need to learn that we're playing at a higher-level competition,” he said.
Aspillaga said he was pleased with the Broncos' first half, where they were down only 1-0 until the dying minutes of the half when SAIT made it 2-0.
“We were doing OK, even though we were losing,” he said.
In the second half, Aspillaga had the players get more aggressive on the attack and use the middle of the pitch more, but the Trojans were able to turn that to their advantage and scored four more times.
“We had issues controlling the middle that we couldn't resolve,” he said. “The other team was much better. I tried to open some spaces but the other team was very successful in penetrating the middle and scored four goals in the second half.”
Complicating matters in the second half, Broncos Adrian Beasley and Eliot Hammond were given red cards and ejected from the game by officials, leaving the Broncos with only nine players on the field for a large part of the last 45 minutes. That in turn allowed the Trojans more space to turn back any Broncos' attack.
The Broncos' next games are Sept. 14 against the Lakeland College Rustlers in Lloydminster and at home Sept. 15 against the Red Deer College Queens and Kings. The women play at noon and the men take the Elks Field at 2 p.m.
