Hudson Girls Soccer Team Falls to Powerful River Falls Team in Regional Final to End Season

The Hudson High School girls soccer team fell to River Falls 4-0 in a WIAA regional matchup in River Falls on Saturday afternoon. The loss ends the Raiders' season.

Hudson Coach John Knutson sent the following recap to Hudson Patch:

The Hudson Raider’s took the field on a warm sunny Saturday afternoon in River Falls for a Regional game against the number one seeded River Falls Wildcats.  With River Falls completing a near perfect regular season with only one tie with Eau Claire Memorial as a blemish on their record, the Raiders were fighting an uphill battle as the Conference #5 seed.  Having defeated the #4 seed, Eau Claire North to advance, Hudson would have to beat the Wildcats to advance in the tournament.  With 12 seniors on the Wildcat roster, their athleticism, speed and talent came through as they put up two goals in the first half and another two in the second half to down the Raiders and end their season.

Both teams played even through 25 minutes of the first half before the 2010 All Conference Player of the Year, Sarah Vitale, scored her first of two goals, with the second following about ten minutes later into the contest.  The half ended with River Falls up 2-0.

According to Head Coach of the Raiders, John Knutson, “We started the game with the intentions of playing stronger defensively by putting an extra player back to help against River Fall’s talented front three forwards, and equally talented four mid-fielders, but after they scored we needed to make the change to get more opportunities on offense ourselves.  Had we continued to hold them scoreless, we would have maintained that formation with an extra defender, but once they scored we had to create more offensive opportunities so we went with more of a balanced formation.  It doesn’t matter if you lose 1-0 or 5-0…after you are down you need to make the changes necessary to get back into it.  One of the things that we have done consistently all year is make adjustments to help our team and put our players in a better position to succeed for the team, but today, we just didn’t have enough to stop the talented Wildcat offense.”

Unfortunately for the Raiders, in trying to push more players up onto the top of the formation to generate more offense, it left the defensive backfield even more exposed and the Wildcats put up three more goals to end the game 4-0.  With Sarah Vitale, the River Falls star forward tallying the first two goals and Taylor Kizlik the River Falls Midfielder putting up the second two goals in the second half, that capped the Wildcats win and moves them into the Sectional Tournament.

After the loss, Knutson said, “I couldn’t be more proud than I am right now with this Hudson Raider team.  All year they worked hard in practice, they jelled as a team, and they played our games with so much heart and passion.  Our theme this year, ‘We Run As One’ was more than a slogan, the girls really adopted the philosophy and played like it every day.  It’s really been a wonderful year and I hope the girls had as much fun as Megan and I have had coaching them.  It was an honor and a privilege to coach this group of young ladies and it was an experience that I wouldn’t have traded for anything in the world.  The fact that I was able to coach these impressive young ladies alongside my daughter Megan is an added bonus.  The truth is that Megan did the lion’s share of the preparation for conditioning, yoga, training and practice preparation which was the only way it was going to work out for me personally since getting off work much earlier than 4:00p.m. daily would have been almost impossible.”

Knutson also announced to the team in his post game talk after the loss that while they weren’t advancing in the playoffs “We still have one major announcement and that is Paige Ommen, your Senior and Co-Captain of the Hudson Raiders was not only named 1st Team All Conference…but also Conference Player of the Year!”  In addition to Ommen’s honors, the Raider recognition also included Co-Captain Ashley Johnson being named to the All Conference 2nd Team, and All Conference Honorable Mention went to two Raider Defenders, Senior Logan Knobel and Sophomore Alyssa Muller.

The only function left yet for the 2011 Hudson Raider Soccer team will be their end of the year banquet where the Varsity Letters, Team Awards and All Conference honors will be bestowed on the players.  The specifics of the banquet are currently in the works by a committee of parents and Sidekicks Booster supporters.

Next year’s Hudson Raiders will return more than half their starting team with promising young Freshmen and Sophomores coming up.  And for the graduating eight seniors, at this point five are looking to play soccer in college.