NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat College Rattlers women's futsal team celebrates their 3-1 win over the Olds College Broncos on Sunday in the South division tournament held at the Snake Pit.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
The Medicine Hat College Rattlers women’s futsal team is gearing up for a run to the finals.
With three wins over the weekend at the locally held South division futsal tournament, the Rattlers women’s team finished their regular season with a 4-1 record, putting them in second place and qualifying them for a spot in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference championships hosted by Keyano College in Fort McMurray, March 10-12.
Head coach Damir Omerovic was happy to see the women’s team build off a challenging 1-9-1 outdoor season to find success in futsal.
“The outdoor season was very tough, knowing that with the small numbers we had to deal with going into futsal, there was a lot of preparation and all their hard work paid off,” Omerovic said. “Competing with the teams that we couldn’t really compete with in outdoor season, we ended up on top against them this football tournament. It was definitely great to see.”
The Rattlers held the South tournament at the Snake Pit and won all but one of their four games, beating the Lethbridge Kodiaks 4-1 on Friday, topping the Prairie Pilots 13-1 on Saturday before losing 2-1 against the first-place SAIT Trojans. MHC finished their weekend with a 3-1 win over the Olds College Broncos.
Rattler Maisa Rebello had a hard time putting to words how excited she was to compete in the championship and how special her team is.
“We’re going with all we have, with passion, this team effort and we’re willing to push through and go for the challenge and we can’t wait,” Rebello said.
“We just have to keep pushing together and we have a little bench, we don’t have a gigantic team but we don’t care. We battle for each other until the last second and that’s that’s the mentality for the future.”
Omerovic says the women’s team got a lot of experience from playing against the stronger teams in their division and as long as they keep recognizing their potential, they’ll do well.
“With what we showed this weekend and how we came out against the strongest teams in the solos, if we can pull off another three or four games like that in the ACAC Championship tournament, we definitely have a big chance to get to the final, possibly go all the way.”
The Rattlers’ men’s futsal team didn’t have the same success in their season, finishing with a record of 1-4.
They opened their weekend with a 4-1 loss against the Ambrose Lions before picking up the 6-4 win against the Prairie Pilots on Saturday. They ended their tournament with two losses, falling 8-1 against the Trojans on Saturday and 8-2 against the Broncos on Sunday.
Omerovic says the performances by the men’s team and how they’ve progressed since the outdoor season gives him confidence heading into the offseason ahead of next year.
“It’s a progression I’ve seen over the last three months in them just realizing that we are on a good road to make things better,” Omerovic said. “The excitement that was built around the program for the past four months with even some of the recruits coming in from the outside and some of the local talent, it’s definitely a bright light for the outdoor season.”
He thanks all the fans for showing up at the Snake Pit over the weekend and cheering on the Rattlers in the tournament.
“It was great to also see some of the younger players that are part of our academy in Medicine Hat coming out to see what the game of futsal is like and also feel that excitement in the pretty intense atmosphere that we had at the Snake Pit.”
Basketball
The Rattlers men’s basketball team’s season came to a close Friday night as they fell 78-60 against the Red Deer Polytechnic in their conference championship play-in game.
