Cloquet Girls Soccer Falls In Season Opener

Chris Shevich-NSO

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Aug 27

Wes Vork-NSO

CLOQUET – Starting a new season after losing 10 seniors to graduation is hard enough, opening your season against a quality high-powered opponent is even harder. The Cloquet girls soccer team found out just how hard that can be on Friday, dropping their opening match to Rosemount by a score of 4-0.

Rosemount
blew the game open with
three first half goals and scored
one more
in the second half to cruise to the 4-0 victory.

With just three seniors on the roster, the reigning Minnesota State Third Place Champion Lumberjacks are fielding the youngest team in recent memory.
The Jacks do return stellar senior goalkeeper Kaitrin Rathe as well as senior sparkplug Jesse Ryan and senior midfielder Hannah Hammond, although Ryan did not play with a leg injury.

What the young Lady Jacks lacked in experience did appear to be made up for in hustle, which should bode well for the group as the season progresses. Cloquet Head
Coach Dustin Randall commented to NSO,
“Though we are inexperienced at the Varsity level, we have a lot of raw talent with the younger girls. This team has a ton of speed coming up. Now we just have to get them to translate that to soccer and get them working together.”

Things won’t get a lot easier for the Jacks in the near future. They host rival Esko-Carlton at 4:30pm on Tuesday and the Academy of Holy Angels at 1:00pm on Saturday. From there they Travel to Hermantown to take on a perennially strong Hawks club.

Wes Vork can be reached at wes@northlandsportsonline.com