Your future, our focus
On the Northwest College sideline, Trappers soccer coach Rob Hill could be seen frustrated and hunched over with his hands scrunched behind his neck.
That was on Friday with the Lady Trappers nursing a 1-0 lead against visiting Western Nebraska Community College. Things quickly went south from there.
The NWC women saw their lead vanish late in the match, and eventually settled for a tie. And on Saturday, Laramie County Community College came to Powell and dealt the Trappers a 4-1 defeat.
The Trapper men suffered the same fate against the same foes, tying 1-1 against WNCC before being handled 6-2 by LCCC on Saturday.
“It takes a lot of mental strength to play a second game against a good team and we didn’t have that against Laramie,” Hill said of his teams’ performances on Saturday. “Against Western Nebraska we had a high level of concentration, of defending and attack. To be a strong team you have to be able to produce back to back games and we were clearly not capable of that.”
The Trapper woes started with what Hill called a complete lack of intensity from the NWC women against WNCC. The Trappers collected eight shots to the Cougars’ seven, but failed to convert. It wasn’t until the 56th minute that NWC found the back of its opponent’s net, and the Trappers had to practically fight for that one.
When NWC’s Gabby Gonzales was shoved to the ground, the freshman forward had to battle back to her feet, shedding a Cougar defender before funneling the ball to an open Kortney McBride. McBride then scooted the pass around goalkeeper Bailee Dopp for a 1-0 lead.
“I think we worked hard today, our offense is definitely trying,” McBride said. “But sometimes I think our effort drops and we let teams get to us.”
NWC (4-7-1) picked the wrong time to let that happen.
With 18:58 left in the game, WNCC’s Kennedy Lawes snuck a cross kick past Trapper freshman and keeper Taylor Meeks to tie the contest. Gonzales had two opportunities to push NWC ahead again, but ricocheted a shot off the crossbar of the WNCC goal in the 74th minute, and with 40 seconds left in regulation, saw her soft kick saved by Dopp.
In overtime, Gonzales had another opportunity, but couldn’t get past Dopp. As a team, the Trapper women out-shot the Cougars 25-18.
“That first half we were slow and very lethargic,” Hill added. “I thought that maybe Gabby’s goal to Kortney would give us some much-needed life, but that didn’t really last.”
On Saturday, NWC started its match against LCCC positively, pressuring the Golden Eagles in their own box and forcing the visitors to score an own goal for a 1-0 Trapper lead in the 25th minute. But it was all LCCC from there as the Eagles scored four unanswered goals.
The NWC men ended the weekend with a 7-5-1 record, seeing their four-game winning streak end at the hands of a tie with the WNCC men.
The Cougar men grabbed a 1-0 lead in the 82nd minute when Mark Campbell scored on a no-doubter past NWC keeper Erik Wehse. But Wehse kept the Trappers in the match when he made a save on a shot just a minute later, setting up Marco Guttierez’s heroics.
In the 89th minute, Guttierez knotted the score when Javier Sanchez found the sophomore forward for a goal. But much like the NWC women, the Trapper men came up short in overtime, and left Hill disappointed after firing a robust 35 shots.
Wehse was happy his teammates rallied, but was left wanting more.
“The fact that we fought back, even till the last minute, was great to see,” Wehse said. “I am very proud of that. To be able to achieve that under the frustrating circumstances just shows how resilient we’ve become as a team.
“I’m not happy with the result though,” he said. “We’ve been through too much hardship as a team to not have this game go our way, but that’s how it goes sometimes.”
The Trappers were forced to fight back late again against LCCC on Saturday, but had already fallen behind 5-0 when Sean McManamon tried to spark a rally. McManamon scored on a free kick in the 73rd minute to make it 5-1 before assisting on Gutierrez’s header two minutes later to cut the deficit to three. But LCCC added an extra insurance goal and finished off the Trappers.
Trapper soccer travels to Colorado this weekend, as the men will face Trinidad State Junior College on Friday and Otero Junior College on Saturday for back-to-back 1 p.m. matches.
The NWC women will play following those contests.
“The teams have to respond now ... it’s a massive challenge to play two games in Colorado,” Hill said. “We have good teams but talent is not enough. We need this mental toughness and this emotional strength. That’s another talent, another skill. That’s something that they’ve gotta quickly fix or the season will end before they know it.”