Men's Soccer Huskies double up Voyageurs on Vullinghs' late-game heroics

Debuting a roster that was both familiar in some regards and completely new in others, the Keyano Huskies Men’s Soccer team overcame their first hurdle of the season Saturday in a 2-1 win against the Portage College Voyageurs.  
 
“I think we made the first half a lot more difficult than it needed to be,” said Head Coach Niels Slotboom. “A very strong start, but then we got away from what makes us successful. It opens the door to any team being able to become dangerous.  
 
“Portage is a decent team and when we do that they’re going to be able to punish us for it and that’s exactly what happened.”  
 
The Voyageurs took the first lead in the game, scoring off a corner kick in the 26th minute via Taylor Bridger.   

That’s how things would remain until halftime, when the Huskies came out a different team in order to meet the challenge of their closest geographical opponent.  
 
In the 48th minute, rookie Stef Vullinghs chested a cross from Tano Torchia into the net to equalize the game. 
 
The Huskies continued to turn up the pressure, with Torchia sending a few headers just wide or over the bar among the many scoring chances.  
 
Then, in the 80th minute, a blocked Huskies shot by the Voyageurs found its way to the outside and Torchia. After playing it back into the middle to Vullinghs, the rookie stepped up and drilled a perfect shot from 30 yards out into the top of the middle of the net.  
 
“It was an amazing feeling to score like that to help the team I also want to thank the team because they help me,” Vullinghs said. “The team did it. Niels told us [at halftime] to shut our egos away. That’s what we did and that’s why we won.” 

“That’s obviously why we have him here,” Slotboom continued of the performance. “He’s got some big shoes to fill; there’s been lots of really good players in our program that have now moved on because they’ve graduated out and are on to greener pastures.  
 
“That’s the pressure that is on all of our players. Stef lived up to that today and that second goal was what saved us.”  
 
And that was just the first 90 minutes of what will be another challenging season for the Huskies.  
 
The positive results of the past three years have brought with it each team’s best when they take to the pitch against the Huskies. Eager to both take down a program that has played for a medal for the previous three-straight seasons and deny the Huskies valuable points in the standings when the field is level.  

Even though just five student-athletes remain from the 2023 championship team, the first and second-year players now have that pressure on them to perform at a consistent level to match the challenge presented. As well, there’s still 11 more opportunities to face that pressure on their path to hopefully qualifying for the ACAC Championship at the end of next month.  

“I think we have a lot of new faces; not necessarily new to the level, but a lot of new faces to our program and there’s a different type of pressure that they learn how to deal with,” Slotboom said. “Game one is out of the way, we have the three points that we want so hopefully we can use that as a learning experience to build a solid foundation where we don’t leave the door open for other teams to take advantage of us.”   

The Keyano Huskies are back in action this coming weekend, travelling to Edmonton to take on the NAIT Ooks. They’ll return home for games against the Concordia University of Edmonton Thunder on September 20 and 21 at SMS Equipment Place.