25 October 2023
The Park Wolfpack took down the Minnetonka Skippers 1-0 in the final minutes of the Class 3A state tournament quarterfinals matchup Tuesday night.
Defense and conservative strategies were the story of most of the game. Both teams had a couple of shots on goal in the first half, but the game went into intermission with no score. Mother Nature provided a steady drizzle for most of the night, making footing and catching the ball more difficult than usual.
The second half was filled with more defense, both teams getting within a few feet of breaking the tie but failing to score.
Finally, in the 74th minute, the tense stalemate was broken when Wolfpack senior Brayden Kortus scored on a header off of a corner kick. From there, with only five minutes left to play, Park bolstered its defense and played it safe with its one-goal lead.
The win for the Wolfpack comes as the second installment of their Cinderella story. The unseeded team came into the state tournament with an upset win last week. Tuesday’s victory over Minnetonka is even more of an upset, as the Skippers held the third seed in the tournament.
“It’s a whirlwind right now,” Park head coach Andrew Bourgoine said. “That’s probably one of the best, if not the best, team we’ve played all year. We just played amazing today. Our strategy against Rosemount was to dig deep on defense and try to get offense when we can. And once we get set pieces, that’s when we make our chance, and we did that again tonight.”
When asked about the next round, Bourgoine said the team is already doing what it needs to do.
“I think we’re playing with house money at this point,” he said. “We’re going to U.S. Bank Stadium, and that’s super exciting. Now it’s pretty much just play how (we) are playing. I mean, we’re in the top four teams. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing.”
Minnetonka head coach Mike Rogers congratulated his team on a successful season, though it didn’t end the way they wanted.
“The boys played hard, it just wasn’t our night,” Rogers said. “We had a terrific season. We just really thought we were going to go forward tonight. I’m not really prepared to say much, just trying to shore up the pain right now.”
Park will take on the winner of Thursday’s match between second-seeded Maple Grove and unseeded Andover.
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