After several recent misses, Park shook the East Ridge monkey off their backs.
Junior midfielder Terry Espinoza-Garibay’s penalty kick with 14:29 to play lifted the Wolfpack to a dramatic …
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After several recent misses, Park shook the East Ridge monkey off their backs.
Junior midfielder Terry Espinoza-Garibay’s penalty kick with 14:29 to play lifted the Wolfpack to a dramatic 2-1 win over visiting East Ridge at Wolfpack Stadium Thursday evening.
“It’s home turf, so that’s way better,” said Espinoza-Gariby when asked what the difference was between this game and the last time the Wolfpack faced the Raptors. “We’ve got the fans all around us and we just wanted to win it in front of them. I thought we won every ball out of the air; it was a lot of chances we had too. We had a lot of good plays, one-twos and all that.”
It was Park’s first win over the Raptors since a 2-1 victory in the first round of section play during the 2020 season. Even last season during Park’s run to third place in the Class AAA state tournament, East Ridge dominated the Wolfpack, scoring a 5-1 win in mid-September.
This time was different, however. The two teams battled on even terms most of the match.
Park took a 1-0 lead early in the second half on a goal by junior midfielder Isaac Lor. But the Raptors responded a few minutes later with a tying score. That set the stage for the late game heroics by the Wolfpack.
“I’m feeling good after a win against East Ridge,” said veteran Park captain Tristan Lee who was in his first game back after being injured the first part of the season. “It took me four years to finally win against East Ridge. It feels pretty good, especially my senior year, with the guys, beating East Ridge, getting higher on the conference table.”
The win was just what the Wolfpack needed after a tough 4-0 loss at Roseville two days before.
“It’s been a while,” said Park head coach Andrew Bourgoine of the win over the Raptors. “Usually, it’s not even close. But this year we came out with a little fight. Obviously, they got a red card with 20 minutes left so that definitely helped a little bit. But that’s the kind of fight I wanted out of these guys. We’ve lost games 3-0, we just lost Tuesday 4-0 when it was 0-0 with 14 minutes left and we lost 4-0.
“Yesterday in practice you make a mistake, you give up a goal, we don’t put our head down, that’s what happened on Tuesday,” Bourgoine added. “We put our head down and they scored four goals in a blink of an eye. Tonight, it was all about, you make a mistake, you have to trust your teammates right behind you helping you out. That’s kind of what we’re working on. We’re a team, we need to trust each other. And it worked tonight.”
Junior goalie Ben Fee got the win in goal for Park against the Raptors.
“We actually talked for once as we didn’t let up when we got scored on, so that was a big part of it,” said senior defender Devin Igl.
Roseville 4, Park 0
Host Roseville blanked the visiting Wolfpack in boys' soccer Tuesday, winning 4-0. It was Park’s most lopsided loss of the season.
Eastview 3, Park 0
After the dramatic win over East Ridge, the Wolfpack came down to earth a bit and suffered a 3-0 loss to host Eastview in a non-conference boys soccer game Saturday.
Eastview led 1-0 at the half then added two goals after the break while holding the Wolfpack out of the net.
Park slipped to 4-4 overall on the season.
Park plays at Suburban East Conference co-leaders White Bear Lake (2-0-1, 5-1-3) Thursday, then hosts Shakopee (3-2-1) Saturday in a non-conference contest starting at 7 p.m.
