The Raiders boys’ soccer team finished the regular season with four straight wins that started two weeks ago with a 2-0 win against St. Thomas Academy and a 4-3 nailbiter against Park. The final two games of the season were at South St. Paul and at Simley.
“Both of these games are massive,” explained head coach Jamie Swanson ahead of the South St. Paul game. “We need to just not win, we need to win convincingly tonight, and we need to beat the top team in our conference on Thursday.”
Strange things happen on Ettinger Field, weird bounces, players tripping with no one around, things that Coach Swanson had to discuss with the boys.
“We need to keep our composure. We always seem to switch something off mentally on this field. And like I told the dudes just now, this is now, like five or six times as a varsity coach and plenty of other times as an assistant coach. And I've seen it all here. I just saw one right here. The girls were not expecting to draw that match. So that is a direct example of what can happen on this field if you are not ready to play for all 80 minutes, because they do what they do, no matter what. This place hasn't changed. You still got the weird areas where it goes flat and then up and, I guess we will count it lucky that we've had a kind of a dry fall, because otherwise when you play in this on this date, it's not soccer,” he chuckled.
Nothing weird happened and the Raiders did win, 8-0, which to soccer fans should be considered convincingly. The important question is, did the section consider it convincingly?
“We need to beat both of those teams to even be considered for the fourth spot,” added Swanson. “And we need some help from Eastview, they need to lose one of their last matches.”
Ethan Schaack continued his bid to be a top ten scorer in the state with three goals. Parker Geib, Jed Carlson, Brody Geib, Nate Samii and Noah Schmaltz all logged one goal. Johan Rova-Hegener logged two assists, Carlson, Brody Geib and Malachi Beal each earned an assist. Johnathan Braucks earned the shutout with four saves.
After thumping the Packers, the Raiders took a trip the other direction out of town to take on Simley. The Raiders took advantage of the Spartan’s mistakes, netting four goals to walk away with another huge win, this time 4-1.
Brady Stewart stopped six of the seven shots he faced in goal, and he also was credited for an assist. Schaack had a goal and an assist, Carlson had two goals and Parker Geib had a goal.
The Raiders finished the season 9-6-1 overall and 5-3 in the conference earning them 15 points in the standings. They finished fourth behind Two Rivers (17), Mahtomedi (16) and Simley (16). They won the tie breaker with fifth place Hill Murray (15), St. Thomas (14) North St. Paul then Tartan (6) and South St. Paul (0).
During the regular season, 13 different Raiders scored a goal. Ethan Schaack led the Raiders with 1,229 minutes played. Noah Schmaltz was next with 1,209. Schaack also led in goals scored with 22 and recorded seven assists. Brody Geib led the assists category with 11. Hastings had 16 players who played double digit games.
As far as section seeding went, Eastview did help the Raiders. They lost not one, but both of their finals games which all but locked in the fourth seed for Hastings. The section meeting went as planned for once for the Raiders and Hastings was awarded the fourth seed.
The schedule is impossible to write for this story because the first game of sections takes place after press on Tuesday and before delivery on Wednesday. There are two things to note here. First, we will have the results on our Facebook page. Second, here are the scheduling possibilities:
1. #4 Hastings beats #5 Eastview and #1 Eagan wins, Hastings plays at Eagan at 5:00 p.m. on Oct. 10.
2. #4 Hastings beats #5 Eastview and #8 Jefferson wins. Jefferson travels to Hastings on Oct. 10. At 5:00 p.m.
3. #4 Hastings falls to #5 Eastview ending their season.
Hopefully Hastings earns the first win and plays Thursday. We have included a printed bracket for you to keep track of the rest and of course, we will keep an updated bracket on social media.