It'd be cliché to characterize every weekend as a must-win weekend for the Keyano Huskies Men's Soccer team, but that's exactly the vibe around their third home weekend of the 2023 outdoor season in Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) action.
Hosting the 1-1-1 Concordia Thunder, the 2-2-1 Huskies will be aiming to prevent a team from leapfrogging them into the top-half of the North Division standings.
Sitting in fourth place, the Huskies find themselves just on the outside of the playoff picture as they get set to cross the halfway mark of their regular season. That's why not just wins, but consistency as well, are still in the sights of the team.
"It's important that we bring the momentum from last weekend, even though it was a weekend of two completely different results; very similar efforts," Head Coach Niels Slotboom said. "We've got to try and make sure that we put that same effort in and we'll be on the right side of the results this weekend.
"Everybody is close in our league so every single point is going to count."
The Thunder lost their season-opener to the Lakeland Rustlers by a 6-2 score and bounced back, like the Huskies did earlier this month, with a win against the Portage Voyageurs. Their most-recent result, a 0-0 tie with The King's University Eagles built momentum into what is also a must-win weekend for them.
On the Huskies' side of things is a pair of weekend results that left them seeking more, knowing they need to strike now while the teams ahead of them also seek to gain points against the bottom half of the division this weekend as well.
Slotboom was eyeing more of an effort like Sunday, one he knows the team is capable of replicating each week.
"Both games were a great effort from the guys," Slotboom added of last weekend's results. "Obviously the Sunday was more complete than the Saturday, so I'm hoping we continue that trend and have our consistency there."
The Huskies and Thunder meet at Shell Place for a pair of games this weekend. Saturday, the two sides will clash at 4:00 p.m. with a 2:00 p.m. kick-off. Both games will be available on ACAC TV.
