By Heather Baril
— Last week was a mixed bag for the Carman Kickers in terms of wins and losses.The team lost their Monday night game against the Hanover Strikers by a score of 3-1.“We started off quite poorly, we sat back and waited for the ball, so we kept having to react to whatever they were doing rather than dictating the flow of the game, and that didn’t make it easy for us,” said coach William Hoogerdijk. “They ended up scoring about 10 or 15 minutes in as a result. “Shortly after the goal, probably about 5 minutes later, we started to turn things around, we started to challenge the ball alot more, to come to the ball, not to respect them too much and give them too much room.”Hoogerdijk said the change in game tactics began paying off for the kickers.“We got them scrambling and so now they had to react to what we were doing and we were playing the game that we wanted to play,” he said. “In the end they ended up coughing up the ball and Lyle Vanveen went in and scored the equalizer, and that was with about 10 or 15 minutes left in the half.”The two teams ended the first half tied, and Hoogerdijk said the Kickers were ready to go in the second.“We had a really encouraging chat at half and went back on and started to play hard again and it looked like we were getting a number of chances to put something in or at least we were creating chances for ourselves,” said Hoogerdijk. “But then we let them get down the left-hand side unchallenged and they got a goal that probably shouldn’t have gone in, it was a pretty weak goal. About five minutes later they got another goal and that put them up three to one and after that we had a hard time getting any in the goal.“To use an old cliche I think we were sort of deflated but we were getting panicky too. We didn’t have a really strong attack after we went down 3-1, we just kept trying to throw everything out there at their net, but we weren’t getting any good chances.”In general. Hoogerdijk said the kickers played a primarily decent game.“I thought overall we played a decent game,” he said. “Not the whole game, but certainly for half the game we played fairly strong, it was just that we had to wait about 15-20 minutes before we decided that maybe we’d better play the game a little stronger and we got burned on a couple of poor goals.”Hoogerdijk said the Kickers also received some good news last week, namely a default win”We ended up picking up a win from a previous game against the Blue Blazers,” he said. “Apparently they were playing with an ineligible player when they played us, so their last win against us, which was by the score of 4-2 now turned into a 3-0 win for us.”The win means another three points for the Kickers and lands them in a three-way tie for seventh place, with 21 points.If we end up just making it in on the eighth spot then we’d end up playing the team we played on Monday, we’d end up playing them again,” Hoogerdijk said. “Going from how we played them on Monday I think we can beat them, but we have to come out with a full game. It wasn’t nice to lose 3-1 but there’s all kinds of positives you can take. “We still have another chance because of this win by default and we’re playing strong games against teams above us, we’re at least tying them or challenging them. It’s not that we’re playing lousy games, it’s just we’re not getting the goals that we need to put us on the winning side.”On Friday the Carman Kickers played in Winnipeg against Ragnaroc. Results were unavailable as of press time.
