Bobcat soccer teams to travel for playoffs

Keashae Masters and Jorja Hoad were 30 minutes away from squeezing in two more matches on home turf on Saturday.

However, the Providence Pilots women’s soccer team had other plans. The Manitoba Colleges Athletic Conference’s top seed stormed back from a two-goal deficit to tie the match 2-2, hanging onto first place and securing home-field advantage for the playoffs.

“The first half was pretty good. We kept the ball, but I would say what we struggled with the most was our own mistakes … The goals came off of our mistakes,” said Masters, adding she fully expects to face the Pilots one more time next Sunday.

“I’m ready to see them again. It doesn’t matter where we play them; I’m ready to play.”

The Bobcats had an outside chance at the No. 1 spot on Sunday.

With the season series deadlocked against the Pilots on wins and goals scored, the Bobcats needed a Providence loss to St. Boniface while simultaneously defeating Assiniboine College by enough to erase a whopping goal-differential gap of 18.

BU beat AC 9-0, but Providence downed USB 6-3 to stay in first.

The Bobcats will play Les Rouges at Providence on Saturday in the semifinals, with the Pilots facing the Canadian Mennonite University Blazers in the other game.

All signs are pointing to one more clash between Brandon and Providence, who have met in the last three league finals.

“It’s just figuring out how to stop them,” Masters said. “They have the seniority on us right now, but the new set of girls, from the first game against Prov to the second and third, they came here to fight.”

The Bobcats benefited from a close call on Saturday, when a failed clearing attempt by a Pilot directed the ball towards her own net, and the officials ruled that it crossed the line before she was able to boot it away.

Brandon led 1-0 at halftime, and doubled the advantage at the hour mark when Hoad broke through the back line, dribbled past the goalkeeper and tucked it home.

In that moment, the Bobcats could taste first place.

“That’s Jorja. I’ve been playing with her for the past five years and it’s been nice. Clutch moments like that, she’s right there,” Masters said.

“Just to get the ball across the line, if you need that, she can do it. If we need to send the ball up the field, she can do that as well.”

The lead was far from comfortable, though, and cushion didn’t last long.

The Pilots answered a few minutes later on a BU miscue, playing the ball back to keeper Casey Lamoureux with two attackers pressing. She fired the ball off one striker, deflecting it back to her to make the initial save before Serena Negrich knocked it in.

Negrich was in an offside position when the ball was played towards the keeper, meaning she shouldn’t have been able to play the ball immediately following the save, but the goal stood.

Then, in the 73rd minute, Negrich finished a cross from Halle Owen to tie the game and ultimately secure the necessary point.

So the Bobcats were unable to follow three straight titles with a regular-season crown, but Masters is proud of what they’ve done. As a captain, the Thompson product hopes she’s living up to those who showed her the way earlier in her career.

“I looked up to them a lot on the field; all of their experience, I took a lot out of their books,” Masters said.

“If I’m coming to practice and giving 100 per cent, I expect the players behind me to, which they have.

“Coming up as a team where we’ve won three, it’s not easy to just keep winning but these girls have figured out how to keep fighting for it, because not all the teams in the league are handing it to us anymore; they’re fighting.”

BU MEN SETTLE FOR FOURTH

The Bobcats men’s soccer team had a chance at third place, but fell 3-0 to the Pilots on Saturday.

On Sunday, the Cougars earned their first point of the season, drawing the Bobcats 1-1.

BU will face the host CMU in the semifinals in Winnipeg on Sunday, while Providence and St. Boniface play in the other.

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com