(Aislyn Carrillo/CHSAANow.com)
FORT COLLINS — In the past three years, Boulder boys soccer has owned the series with Fort Collins. Thursday night, however, was a gamechanger.
The tenth-ranked Fort Collins Lambkins (10-4-1 overall, 6-3-1 league) gave it their all to defeat the No. 3 Boulder Panthers with a final score of 2-1.
It was Fort Collins’ first win over Boulder since 2009. The Panthers had won the previous three meetings by a combined score of 12-0.
Boulder maintained a majority of the possession in the first half, connecting on passes and working their way down the field. Even though the Panthers were able to effectively pass the ball down the field, they were not as effective when it came to completing shots on goal.
Fort Collins, on the other hand, was able to complete one of the many attempted shots in the first half. At 21:51, Senior Max Bostak successfully gave his team a 1-0 lead.
“Scoring that first goal was overwhelming,” Bostak said. “I’ve always wanted to beat Boulder, and it was really exciting to score the first goal.”
During Bostak’s past three years of representing the Lambkins soccer program, he has never seen the day of his team upsetting the Panthers.
Halftime was a time to come together for both teams. Fort Collins coach Justin Stephens challenged his team to outwork Boulder and he is proud of how they performed in the second half.
The second half was more of an open game, circumstances started to become intense with the ball consistently being played on both sides of the field.
Boulder tied the game midway through the second half on a goal from Omar Castruita.
At 1-1, Boulder kept up its forceful play, but under the tough, wet conditions, the Panthers not able to break the tie — or defend their goalie in the proper manner that coach Hardy Kalisher desired.
“Too many corner kicks, restarts, and balls around the box that didn’t get put in,” Kalisher said. “We probably needed to protect our goalkeeper a little better, too.”
With just under seven minutes left to play, Lambkin senior Connor Lowdermilk scored what proved to be the winning goal.
According to Stephens, with his team playing what he considers the best they have in the past couple weeks, this was a match that his team could build off of with the Class 5A tournament looming.
“We found ourselves in a little bit of a rut and this was an excellent way to play ourselves out of that and give ourselves momentum going into playoffs,” Stephens said.