Despite defeating the Ponoka 4-0, the Stettler men's soccer team's captain said the team hadn't brought its best game to the field on Sunday, June 26.
With the Ponoka Stampede plus work obligations winnowing down the Ponoka squad until it could only field eight players, the Stettler team, with its full roster, should have been able to power through them, captain Andrew Vanderburg said.
"We could have played a lot better," he said. "We definitely played better in the second half."
The first half of the game remained scoreless, with Ponoka's goal-minder, Wouter Opsteen, keeping Stettler at bay. In the second half, Ponoka's players began to ran out of gas, but continued to harry Stettler as best they could despite the player deficit.
Morgan Benoit, Marco Vanderburg, Andrew Vanderburg and Garret Burns scored for Stettler.
"It was a good learning game," Andrew Vanderburg said. "They're the top team in the league."
Opsteen did his best to stop the ball from hitting the net, but with his team tiring, the shots came through more and more, and when the game ended it ended at a 4-0 deficit for Ponoka.