The regular season and semifinals are in the books for the Moose Jaw High School Athletic Association boys and girls soccer leagues, and there are once again some familiar faces gunning for gold.
The girls' title game will feature the Swift Current Ardens vying for their 13th straight league championship after taking a 10-0 win over the Central Cyclones on Saturday afternoon, while the boys' gold medal contest will see Central return to the gold medal game after a silver medal showing last season.
Both of the other finalists will feature two of the tougher teams in league outings in recent years in the Yorkton Regional Raiders.
The championship games are slated for Tuesday, Oct. 18 at 4 p.m. at Canada Games Fields next to YaraCentre.
For the Cyclones, that’ll mean an exceptionally tough battle for the reigning 4A provincial champions. They take the field against a team that has given them close games in both outings this season, as could be expected from the 5A provincial bronze medalists in 2021.
“It’s great competition to be able to play a 5A team and it’s been a really good rivalry with them,” said Central manager Ray Rawlyk. “They’ve been one-goal games, we tied 1-1 and lost 3-2 in the last one here, so it’s a very high level of play and it helps us get prepared for regionals.”
The Cyclones saw plenty of success throughout the campaign and will once again look to put their impressive number of skilled players to good use against what promises to be a formidable opponent.
“Playing as a team will be most important,” Rawlyk said. “We have really good depth and a lot of players, so we’re like wasps on them out there. So it’ll be drive forward and take advantage of our chances, and we’re expecting a close game and a tough game and a lot of energy out there.”
As mentioned, the goal in addition to winning a league championship will be to get as prepared as possible for the big games coming up the next two weekends -- regionals on Oct. 21 and 22 followed by provincials in Moose Jaw during the Oct. 28 weekend.
“That’s the beauty of this city league, we get a chance to play teams like that and it helps us get prepared for regionals and provincials,” Rawlyk said. “And honestly, we just want a team from our region to win. The provincials are so dominated by Regina and Saskatoon that we’d like to say ‘hey, we’re here, too’. So we’ll see what happens and hopefully this helps all the teams get ready for those big games ahead.”
The Ardens, meanwhile, will be looking to continue their decade-plus of dominance, a run unrivalled in high school sports in the province.
“Compared to most years, we end up talking about that stuff at some point, but this year we haven’t talked a lot about that history and winning streaks and stuff like that,” said Ardens co-coach Steven Mah shortly after the win over Central. “It’s been more of a game-at-a-time and focussing on the process and I think that’s worked for us so far, so we won’t have big speeches, we’ll just be looking to go out and win the game.”
Swift Current came into the semifinal somewhat blind after having not faced the Cyclones all season. They got off to a solid start, though, taking a 6-0 lead out of the first half and going on to their comfortable win.
“The girls did a great job in warm-ups getting focussed, not worrying about the weather or anything else and came out with a pretty good performance,” Mah said. “It wasn’t perfect, but it got the job done.”
Jaycee Berggren had a hat trick for the Ardens, while Tenille Willows and Dani Myer each scored twice. Navy Louma, Heidi Spetz and Charlotte Kochan all had single markers.
Now the focus turns to what Mah expects will be their toughest match so far this season when they once again face the Raiders.
“We played them at the start of the season and they’re a really good team, they have some high-end players and in that game, we did a really good job of finishing our chances early,” he said. “We know we have to show up for that game because they have some of the better players in the league and the province, some kids who are really fast and athletic, so it’ll be a good challenge for us.”
