Maybe it was the Habs versus Bruins game or the beautiful weather, but just half of the Okotoks senior boys’ soccer team showed up last Wednesday (May 14), allowing the Canmore Collegiate High School senior boys to run away with a 7-0 victory.
New player Shabouki Webb started off the goal clinic early in the first half, with the rest of the team following suit for the remainder of the match.
“Quite a shame in any sport, you don’t like to see that happen – I just gave our boys a talking the other day about commitment,” CCHS coach Gary Anderson said towards the low player turnout from Okotoks.
Webb went on to score another goal, with teammate Jackson Howatt also finding the back of the net twice. Crusaders Brandon Butler, Soren Kwasny and Graeme Shea supplied the three other goals.
As an example of how well the season start has been for the team, the CCHS senior boys are the lone team in the league without a loss.
“Our guys are coming along well, they’re super dedicated guys and we’re improving exponentially,” Anderson said. “We played a game last week against the Canmore United Men’s team, we try to do that every year and it works wonders for our boys because they get to see how the game should be played; with a degree of physicalness and a little faster speed.”
Knowing they were outmanned, Okotoks was busy utilizing offside traps with their defenders to try and keep CCHS strikers occupied.
“As a striker you really have to pay attention to that, so it was a really skillful, tactical maneuver on their defenders because they didn’t have enough guys,” Anderson said. “Their goalie was tremendous, in fact, I’d say he was the player of the game. He saved many point blank shots – he looked like a star hockey goalie so he was fantastic with the odds being stacked against him.”
Luckily, Okotoks did have a few stragglers show up before the end of the first half.
“I told them this will be a lot more of an even challenge now,” Anderson said at half time to his players. “We’re going to have to play more of an aggressive soccer ... but by that point too, I was putting our young guys in and putting most of our better players on the bench, that’s the way we’ve always done it – we don’t try to rub anyone’s nose in it.”
