Soccer squad wins inaugural Albert Lea Invitational

Published 12:00 am Saturday, June 15, 2002

Rochester has two U-13 Classic 2 girls’ soccer teams. Both will face Albert Lea in regular-season play. One got an unpleasant view of the near future.

The 8:30 a.m. game opened slowly, with both sides sleepwalking through the first 30 minutes.

Midfielder Amanda Arends broke the game open 10 minutes into the second half, going coast-to-coast and netting the first goal. Rochester tried to respond, but was kept out of scoring position by Albert Lea’s defense.

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Defender Samantha Overgaard kept forcing play back to midfield. Tiffany Schrader, at midfield in her first game since recovering from a broken foot sustained during the indoor season, kept the Rochester offense pinned deep in its own territory.

With a few minutes remaining, midfielder Leah Walters capped off the game with a penalty kick. Albert Lea 2, Rochester 0.

“It was important to win this early morning game decisively,” observed coach Lee Walters. “First, it cleared out the cobwebs and readied the team for a long day. Second, it prepared us for the next regular-season game with them a few days after the tournament. Last, but not least, it represented the first time this Albert Lea team has ever beaten a Rochester team.”

Off the field, they are friends, classmates, even sisters.

On the field, they are two teams with a will to win.

The second game pitted Albert Lea’s U-13 team against Albert Lea’s U-14 team. Each challenged, each defended but, in the end, one emerged victorious with U-13’s Leah Walters scoring the only goal.

White Bear Lake, the current unbeaten leader in the North Metro Division, walked into the championship game with a lot of confidence; winning every game that day by at least a two-goal margin. Two hours earlier, they had beaten the only other previously undefeated team, Albert Lea’s U-13 girls. Now they faced them again for the championship.

Two minutes into the game, the White Bear Blast realized that the locals had been “play’n possum.”

The Albert Lea defense smothered White Bear’s offense from the opening kick. Stopper Kendra Olchefske, flanked by defenders Alex Hagen and Dez Jacobs, repeatedly denied the Blast’s forwards the opportunity to set up a shot. Sweeper Elyse Rehmke shut down the plays that White Bear could hammer through, leaving Arends to field a few long distance shots.

The White Bear defense was more porous &045; and punishing. Several times midfielder Emma Dahl and forward Nicole Ball drove through the Blast defense on the left side, only to be turned away by the White Bear goalie. On the right, forward Jackie Rehmke and midfielder Conner Peterson maintained steady pressure, but could not capitalize. Midfielder Kelli Danner and forward Allie Leland also jumped into the fray, keeping the Blast off balance. One of Albert Lea’s strengths are throw-ins, where the locals stunned the Twin City team by having several girls with strong arms that placed the ball deep in White Bear territory, to no avail.

The most fevered battle was at midfield. In the center, Walters and Whitney Wilson counterpunched back and forth with White Bear’s midfielders, neither side willing to cede ground. On the right, it was even more intense with Kristen Nelson locked up with her counterpart almost from the outset. Cara Thorn went left, right and occasionally through the Blast midfielders to feed the left side of the offense. After 60 minutes of scoreless regulation play and 10 unproductive minutes of overtime, the championship came down to a shootout. Albert Lea had never lost a shootout and it was apparent that the Blast had never been in one before. Jackie Rehmke, Olchefske, Wilson, Walters and Jacobs stepped up. Four of them netted their shots. Arends turned away two of White Bear’s five shooters, ending the game.

“We had the luxury of being able to drop the third game and still play for the championship, said coach Greg Wilson. “When the trophies were on the line, every Albert Lea player ratcheted up the intensity and knew what they had to do to win.&uot;