First impressions are lasting and Cameron Hove certainly made a memorable one Friday night for the Albert Lea boys soccer team against Mound-Westonka.

Hove, a freshman, made his first varsity start in goal for the Tigers (1-0) and made an assortment of difficult saves to help give Albert Lea a 2-1 win in its first game of the season on the road.

“Cam came up with some great saves,” said Tigers head coach Elia Romano. “This is a great place for him to be starting.”

Hove made a save that will be etched in the minds of his teammates at crunch time. With less than three minutes left in the game Hove came out from the 18-yard box to beat a White Hawk attacker to the ball and sent the ball nearly 70 yards in the opposite direction on a volley.

Goalkeeping was a big question mark heading into the season for Albert Lea because Hove hadn’t played a minute on the varsity squad, but his play certainly eased some concerns the team may have had before the game.

The only blemish came in the first half with the Tigers leading 1-0 near the end of the half. Mound-Westonka sent a cross from 30 yards out to the top of the 18-yard box and blasted a header into the upper left corner to halve the game. There was little Hove could do on the bang-bang play.

“It’s good to get that first win under our belt,” Romano said. “We didn’t take too many mental timeouts tonight which is encouraging for me.”

Senior Adam Clark put Albert Lea ahead 10 minutes into the game on a cross from Julio Ambriz, also a freshman. Then 25 minutes into the second half Clark cleared the way on a corner kick for Ambriz to bury in the back of the net for a 2-1 lead that the Tigers wouldn’t give up.

“It was a little closer than it should have been,” Romano said. “It was a good start, but we certainly have improvements to make.”

One of those improvements the team needs to make is possessing the ball better. Albert Lea turned the ball over much too much for Romano’s taste and as a result the team was playing out its defensive third much of the game.

“We just didn’t make consistently good decisions to keep possession for a longer time,” Romano said. “In the end we did enough.”

The match was about as evenly matched as possible, and the Tigers held only a slight advantage in shots at 12-10. The Albert Lea defense performed well, but is far from where Romano would like to see the unit.

“The nice thing was we rotated through seven different defenders, but we were not supporting each other as well as we should and were getting beat 1v1,” Romano said. “There’s some work to be done.”

The Tigers have little time to shore up defensive issues because they return to the pitch Tuesday against a perennially strong Northfield team at Hammer Field.