The Northland Pines JV boys finish their season Undefeated with a 3-0 victory against Rhinelander. Although the game was not for anything but pride. The varsity game at Mike Webster field showed how a rivalry needs to be played…physical and with playoff mentality. We were short staffed with our leading scoring striker taking a scratch tonight with a lower body injury and our starting keeper sitting as he is healing from an injury in practice earlier this week. Early on Rhinelander possessed and marched the ball down field and our boys back up never really challenging the ball handler. He took a long shot from 30 yard our back up keeper who misplayed the shot and was able to get one hand on it and it ripped in the back of the net. 14 minutes in the game were down 0-1. This out fire under the team and we possessed the rest of the half and just over 5 minutes in the half Tony Gaetano drove wide to the goal line serving a ball to a streaking AJ Muench who slammed the ball in the net
For some reason this night physical shoulder to shoulder play then became a foul. Play after play Pines was getting called and our strong physical midfielder seemed to be singled out. As the clock wound down in the first half a free kick way down in Rhinelander northeast corner. AJ Muench out of bounds was pulling up his socks was called for a yellow card as the ref said he was within the ten yards of the kicker and was wasting time. Knowing that is was.one sided and steered primarily at my midfielder we decided we could not take the chance of this biased ref giving a red card to our player and sat him the second half. As a result, we were forced to have 4-5 freshman on the field at a time. They played hard and played well, but at times it became a battle of size and they would lose to the bigger men. In the 51 minute our defender failed to clear a ball and as a result wanted to run down his error and was out of position allowing a ball across the goal mouth and their forward finding it in his feet and one touch in the back of the net. The Pines boys did not give up and had some great opportunities late but a great save and a huge clear by their defender keep the tie out of reach. There are a number of things we can carry into the playoffs. We showed that despite losing three starters we can still compete with the larger schools and this depth should pay dividends in the next couple weeks.
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Author: David Keech
David Keech is a retired teacher and works as a sportswriter, sports official and as an educational consultant. He has reported on amateur sports since 2011, known as 'KeechDaVoice.' David can be reached at [email protected]
