It's been a tough start to their first ACAC soccer league for the Portage Voyageurs, as they struggled through two more losses over the weekend. The Portage squad dropped an 8-0 loss at home to the Lakeland Rustlers on Saturday and suffered an 18 to 1 thumping by Concordia Thunder on Sunday.
Considering this is only the first year for the Voyageurs' soccer program in the Alberta Colleges Athletics Conference, the rookie squad is struggling at the start of the season mainly due to depth issues, says assistant coach Kika Mukuniwa. He said the team's lack of experience and short bench takes the sting out of the one-sided losses — a little. The local team played both their weekend games with 11 players on the field and no substitutes on their bench against two well-balanced teams that have been competing in the ACAC soccer league for more than a decade, he said.
With a rookie squad — there's a number of players on the Voyageurs roster that are new to the sport — there can be highlights as well as troubles, says Mukuniwa, explaining that the adaptability of the new players has been excellent, and that can really be seen as an improvement in the squad.
"You can definitely see that the players are understanding the concepts that we are trying to work on. It's always tough when you have a lot of new faces; guys who haven't played together before and quite frankly, some of the guys haven't played too much soccer in their life — but you see that the work ethic is there. Everybody is working hard, and again (we are competing against) some of the established ACAC teams that have had program for 20-30 years," said Mukuninwa.
The players have been gradually building team chemistry, but during this building year, they will have to compete with a much smaller squad in comparison to the other teams. The players however are working much harder in order to compensate for that, and are adapting really quickly, the Assistant Coach adds.
"Competing with Lakeland today, you saw that we only played with 11 players and they gave it their all. So, they are definitely abiding to the system... Unfortunately, there has been some early injuries and again it's tough when you have a squad that's so small. As soon as you have one person go down, another one picks up a knock, it's very hard to continue with momentum. As it gets colder too, it's harder to recover... but the guys work hard and they give it their all, so it's always good to see the work ethic and the hard work," he said.
Mukuninwa expects the work ethic to continue as the team grows.
"I am expecting the same kind of effort. The players are focused and work hard for each other. They fight for each other, and at the end, it's always nice to see that they take the positives from the game. No matter the score line," he said, adding that a few more points in the standings would be OK too. "They are working towards improving those score lines."
For their next games, the Voyaguers are up against Concordia Thunder at home on Saturday, October 5, and on Sunday, they face NAIT in Edmonton at the Clearview field. Kick off is at 2 pm for both games.
