For the second straight year the Canada Day weekend couldn’t have gone any better for Stefan Johansson’s team.
His U12 tier II Impact boys won gold at the Canada Day Classic Boys Tier I, II and III Tournament hosted by the St. Albert Soccer Association Sunday.
The home team came out on top by a 3-0 score over Southwest United ’98 of Edmonton.
The only other team from St. Albert to medal in the tournament was the U14 tier II team coached by Jamie Rochat, who won silver by finishing with a record of two wins and one loss in its group.
“It’s a good feeling,” Johansson said. “It’s a good bunch of lads. The program’s improving. It’s a team that was merged between a north Edmonton team (the Strikers) and the best of St. Albert. We’re a rising commodity.”
For one player, 12-year-old midfielder Haris Ibrahimovich, it was the first gold medal he’s ever won playing soccer.
The Edmonton product said he played “three or four years” of community soccer before joining the higher-level Impact squad this year.
“It’s a big step,” Ibrahimovich said. “I’ve learned more in EIYSA (Edmonton Interdistrict Youth Soccer Association) than any other place and I thank my coaches.”
Ibrahimovich has done well with his new team and scored the second goal of the game in the gold medal game Sunday, on a nice pass across the net from fellow midfielder Mohammed Mahmud in the 16th minute of the game.
Johansson said his team, which is made up of players from several different teams and doesn’t have too much experience playing together, is really starting to gel now, about halfway through their season.
St. Albert got off to a great start in their gold medal victory with their opening goal coming after just one minute of play. A Southwest defender narrowly missed a kick on the ball, but Pavlo Leuko was there to boot the ball in. The goal-scorer said the tournament win will be great for the team’s confidence.
“It makes us think we can win more and it lets us know how good we can play for the rest of the matches, so we have to meet the criteria [that we’ve set by winning],” said Leuko, 12.
Nicholas Johansson effectively put the game away six minutes into the second half when he stole the ball off of a defender, streaked in alone and shot it hard to the far side of the net.
The coach said it was the “sixth or seventh” shutout of the season for his keeper, Tyler Larison.
The key to victory, according to Ibrahimovich, was his team’s effective ball movement.
“We sent it down the sides and the strikers got it, and then we scored the goals from there,” he said.
Prior to getting to the championship game, the Impact beat the Spruce Grove Saints 3-1, tied the Lakewood Impact 1-1 and topped the Edmonton Strikers 6-0.
They have now finished their second tournament of the year and sit third out of 11 teams in their league.
“We let a couple points go,” he said. “We should be fighting for first, but we’ve still got half the season. Hopefully we’ll be there.”
In their only previous tournament, they finished third in Kamloops, B.C. They also have one more tournament remaining in Sherwood Park. Only the top team in their division will move on to provincials in Red Deer Aug. 13-15.
Among the other St. Albert teams in action on the weekend was the U18 team coached by Mark Brostrom, which lost both of its games.
In the U12 tier III division, Paul MacDonald’s Impact team got through the two-game round robin with a draw and a loss before losing in the bronze medal game to the Edmonton West Warriors. In the same division as the U12 gold medallists from St. Albert, Paul Kelly’s squad failed to get out of the round robin after a draw and a loss.
The lone U10 St. Albert Impact team lost both of its games.
