The Albert Lea girls’ soccer team opened the season with a win over Waseca for the second straight season, but the Tigers also watched as one of its best players suffered what could be a season-ending injury again.

Albert Lea posted a 4-0 win as it dominated play and fired 38 shots, but senior defender and two-time all-state tournament player Sophie Miller suffered a serious hip injury that could end her season prematurely. Last season the Tigers lost Jenna Christensen to an anterior cruciate ligament tear in the first seven minutes of the game.

“We are really cursed by that game,” said Albert Lea head coach Rick Barnhill. “I don’t know what it is with that team.”

Miller was injured in the final 10 minutes of the game when she collided with a Bluejay defender. Barnhill was told Miller heard something pop in her hip area and she was taken to the emergency room. The X-rays were negative, but it could be a muscle tear or strain, Barnhill said.

The loss of Miller for the season would be damaging for the Tigers. Miller is one of the strongest players on the field for Albert Lea from her position on defense and was the hero for the Tigers in the section championship game when she scored the game-tying goal with less than 10 minutes to play.

Albert Lea held a 4-0 lead when Miller was inserted at the forward position to give another defender some work at her position and also give Miller some time at forward, a position she plays occasionally when the team needs a goal in a crucial situation. She was at forward for a brief time before she was injured.

The loss of Miller, who is already the fourth player injured, on the field will mean the team will have to rely on its youth a little more than first anticipated. The starting defense already featured a ninth-grader and an eighth-grader. Albert Lea had eight players take the field for the first time as varsity players Friday in Waseca and 10 of the 24 players on the roster are ninth-graders or younger.

The younger players helped the Tigers get on the board first against Waseca when eighth-grader Sarah Savelkoul scored off a cross from eighth-grader Brooke Hanson on a volley to the far post in the 24th minute of the first half. Seventh-grader Megan Kortan assisted on the first of two goals by Ariel Christensen in the second half at the 46th minute.

The veterans also did their part as Morgan Stadheim scored in the 62nd minute after she knocked in a shot from 16 yards out and Taylor Friehl assisted on Christensen’s second goal of the game in the 65th minute.

“For the first game it wasn’t bad,” Barnhill said. “The only really critical thing you could say was our finishing.”

Barnhill said the team could have scored on numerous other occasions. Albert Lea sent 17 shots on goal in the game.

Barnhill unveiled his newest formation this season in the first game of the year. The team will play a 2-1-2-1-3-1, meaning two defenders in the back, a advanced central defender or the “gladiator” position as Barnhill calls it, two recessed midfielders, a central midfielder which Barnhill refers to as the “wolf” position, three forwards and a target forward. The formation makes the team play wider and creates networks of passing for the players as it lends itself to the formation of triangles around the field.

The Tigers travel to Rochester Tuesday to face defending conference champion Century, a team that went 15-4 last season and beat Albert Lea 5-0.