AURORA—The Mesabi East Area boys’ soccer team came into Wednesday night’s game expecting to have their hands full with visiting Cloquet.
The Lumberjacks have won Section 7AA the last two years and return plenty of talent from a year before. Cloquet got to show that talent off for a full 80 minutes as they downed the Giants 7-0.
Mesabi East Area head coach Eric Njimegni said after the game that he expected an uphill battle for his squad but the message stayed the same for them regardless.
“I told the boys that we don’t give up,” Njimegni said. “We play with the same intensity from the first minute until the last minute. No matter what the score is, we keep fighting. Cloquet is a very good team and they’re very solid all around. They’re involved in the game year round and it’s always going to be a challenge against teams like that just because of the environment they get to play in. We respect that and we tried our best to battle against them from start to finish.”
The Giants got off to a poor start. Within the first five minutes, an attempted clearout near the Giants goal ended up going down as an own goal as a Mesabi East Area player incidentally put the ball past his own goalie Colton Bialke, giving the Lumberjacks the 1-0 lead.
Cloquet was able to build some momentum after that, grabbing goals again at 10:21 and 13:49 from Max Sundquist and Collin Young, respectively. The early mistakes began to build up for Njimegni and his team, but the coach remained positive.
“You’re going to make mistakes and that’s OK. There’s going to mistakes in soccer and just like in life, you have to learn from them. You’ll never be perfect and if you’re perfect then you have nothing to learn. If you make a mistake, forget about it and move on to the next play.
“We came in here expecting a tough game. It’s a varsity soccer game so we knew we had to work hard for us, for our fans and that’s how we approached the game.”
The Giants things more difficult for the Lumberjacks following the third goal. The defense picked things up and prevented Cloquet from charging down the middle of the field some early shots. That was something Njimegni was hoping to see from his team.
“This is our fourth game and that was some of the best I’ve seen us defend so far this year. The guys were very organized and we were able to set things up and stay compact so they couldn’t just walk down the center of the field. We don’t give that up too easily. We tried to make things a little bit more difficult for them and make them work to the sides. I was happy to see that.”
A foul later in the half inside the penalty area against the Giants set the Lumberjacks up for a penalty kick, one where Ben Schramm was able to convert against Bialke to make it a 4-0 game.
Cloquet grabbed possession back not long after and buried another, this time one from Hudson Snesrud to make it a 5-0 game. That score carried into halftime with Cloquet comfortably in front.
The Giants limited Cloquet to just two goals in the second half, both coming from Young, giving him the hat trick by night’s end. For his squad, a 7-0 loss doesn’t normally offer reason to celebrate but Njimegni was still pleased to see the growth his team demonstrated.
“We’ve got a lot of new guys on this team. We graduated nine seniors and about 20 new kids came out for the program this year. That’s great to have in terms of numbers but they’re still learning. We don’t have a lot of guys who have been playing soccer from a young age so we’re spending a lot of time learning things as they come. The way we picked up the defense, I was happy with our guys. I was telling them to shave left, shave right and they’d listen. It takes some work but they’re picking it up.”
The Giants next took on Grand Rapids on Thursday in a game played at Rock Ridge High School. They’re set to return to the pitch on Tuesday when they host Proctor. That game kicks off at 7 p.m.
Most Popular
Comments / 0