Patrick Kolafa
The Drumheller Mail
The St. Anthony’s Sabres Senior girl’s soccer team showed poise in their first game of the season hosting Strathmore Wednesday afternoon.
The team has been together for the last few years and this season has moved up to the senior high level. Other schools have more established programs and it showed as Strathmore jumped out to a big lead early.
Strathmore quickly put up seven goals in early, before Brooklyn Davies scored on a penalty kick to make the score 7-1 at the half.
“At half time I told the girls, I really don’t care about the score,” said coach Gavin Makse. “All we want to do is win the second half.”
He said there were a few simple adjustments they needed to make to get them back in the game.
“They were older and bigger than us and we maybe were a little bit intimidated because they were beating us to every ball. But I knew we had more speed, so I challenged them to win every ball,” said Makse.
It worked, as the Sabres scored three to Strathmore’s one to win the second half. Davies had a hat trick and Kayla Finkbiner scored. Final score, 8-4.
The game was a good warm up for the fifth annual Sabres Invitational tournament this coming Friday, September 26. The Sabres will be hosting Notre Dame, Cochrane and Strathmore.
Coach Makse says last season they were able to beat Notre Dame once, and Cochrane has always had a strong program. He is looking forward to playing Strathmore.
“Our goal is to beat them. Our girls got enough confidence out of this game today that we could do that,” said Makse.
St. Anthony’s first take to the field at 9 a.m. versus Strathmore, noon versus Cochrane and 3 p.m. versus Notre Dame in the round robin tournament.
