October 18th, 2021...WELLAND - The Niagara Knights men's soccer team saw their post-season dreams come to an end Saturday night in a 2-0 loss to the St. Clair College Saints.
The Knights traveled to Windsor, ON, Saturday for their Ontario Colleges Athletic Conference (OCAA) crossover game with the East division Saints. With the win, the Saints will advance to the OCAA Quarterfinal match October 23rd.
The Knights came out of the gate firing on all cylinders when they had a chance early on to beat Saints keeper Thomas Kogel, but Kogel came up with a huge save for St. Clair to keep it a scoreless match.
St. Clair seemed to take over the game after a big save from their keeper, controlling much of the first half and hammering away at Knights keep Dawson Jordan. Jordan kept his team in the game until the 26 minute mark when St. Clair capitalized on a corner kick opportunity,
Being down 1-0 the Knights took another blow when Jordan collided with a Saints striker in the box and would not return for the remainder of the game.
Head coach Frank DeChellis expressed his displeasure in the referee's call on the situation especially since Jordan was having perhaps his top performance all season.
"Dawson was having a great game to that point and deserved a chance to take us home," said DeChellis. "I thought the referee could have done a better job controlling that striker's antics early on, but it was a well officiated game otherwise."
The Saints continued their pressure into the second half and eventually getting another one by backup keeper Joel Marinas to go up 2-0 in the 64th minute.
The blue and white seemed to come to life in the last 20 minutes of the game trying to get shots off from long range to beat Kogel, but time was not on the Knights side and St. Clair would hang on to capture the 2-0 win.
"The game had a lot of back and forth and we had even more chances after we switched goalkeepers," said Dechellis. "I really can't complain about the effort of the players or the quality of the match. The only thing I was really disappointed in was the final score."
"Liam Mitchell, Sunao Yamamoto, Sebastian Brown and Travis Korten all created chances for themselves over 90 minutes."
Despite the loss, DeChellis points to the positives of not only this game, but his season as a whole- including 2021 being the 10th consecutive season with post-season action.
" We took advantage of the short season and our team's specific situation and used the season to get as many minutes as possible for our first year players," said DeChellis. "We think we were successful in that regard as we went to Windsor without injured Noah and Christian and the team still had a very good product on the field. It was also a chance to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del on the program in terms of philosophy, approach and playing style. This group of young men will represent Niagara College well over the next few years."
