Crested Butte Kickers struggle in Telluride soccer tournament

Rodrigo Gonzaga nets five goals

It was a tough finish to the summer season of adult soccer tournaments for the Crested Butte coed squad. The team had a phenomenal showing a month ago on their home turf, taking second place, and things were in place for a run at the Telluride tournament title last week.

Unfortunately, a couple of key players got dates mixed up and work schedules confused and the Crested Butte Kickers were scrambling to put a team together for the final event of the summer.
Saturday morning, they took the field with a couple of last-minute fill-ins and some imports from Carbondale—not to mention former players Megan Clark, Whitney Mick and Than Acuff who were called out of retirement to supplement the depleted squad.
They opened Saturday against a talented Telluride team that is a perennial powerhouse in the Telluride adult league.
Drew Canale was called into action in net and had an admirable showing but Telluride took an early 1-0 lead.
Crested Butte battled back to tie it up when Jon vonBreisen took a pass at midfield and slid it through to Rodrigo Gonzaga. Gonzaga took one look to find the Telluride keeper charging out and slid the ball past him on his first touch. Tied 1-1, things were looking good but a late strike from Telluride assisted by the Kickers scoring on themselves sealed the 3-1 win.
A team meeting assessed the damage incurred during the Telluride match and players were shifted accordingly. In other words, the aging Acuff pulled a hamstring in the game and was put in net, allowing Canale to direct traffic in the field in their game against Winter Park.
This game may have been the lowest the team was all summer long. Typically, Winter Park is a stress-free opponent. Saturday, they appeared to be even more so with a roster that was a couple of players short of a full team. They picked up a few warm bodies for the game against the Kickers, and quickly built a 2-0 lead on Crested Butte by halftime.
Fortunately, Gonzaga struck again twice on offense. His first goal came on a penalty kick to pull within one and then tied it up later in the second half with another goal for the 2-2 tie.
With a loss and a tie, the only thing left for the Kickers to do was win on Sunday, for another classic Crested Butte 1-1-1 tournament effort.
Over the years, the Kickers became famous for winning Sunday morning’s game following Saturday night debauchery. This year though, the debauchery was kept at a relative minimum and the Kickers were looking bright-eyed for their game Sunday against a team from Denver.
Almost too bright-eyed.
Acuff was in net again and after the first five minutes it looked as if Crested Butte would be going down in a big way.
Denver was on fire through the first part of the first half, crashing the net for crosses at will.
They took an early 1-0 lead and the Crested Butte morale was dwindling fast. But a couple of kick saves in net from Acuff and the work of Gonzaga up front inspired the team to take control of the game.
Canale teamed up with Reeves Hewett, Steve Gardner and Beda Calhoun on defense to shut the Denver attack down, while von Breisen and Brandon Clifford dominated midfield play.
The turnaround resulted in two strikes from Gonzaga and the Kickers took a 2-1 lead into halftime.
They carried their momentum into the opening 15 minutes of the second half, with Megan Clark and Karina Steele causing havoc on the outside, opening up the middle for vonBreisen and Clifford to find seams in the Denver defense.
Ian Elder spent a majority of the Crested Butte tournament on defense insisting he was a striker. Against Denver he proved himself up front, receiving a pass inside the 18 and beating two guys with a turn to bury the biscuit and build a 3-1 Crested Butte lead.
Injuries befell the Kickers over the course of the final 20 minutes though, with both Canale and Gonzaga forced to the sidelines.
From there, the house of cards crumbled and Denver rattled off three goals in 15 minutes to go up 4-3. Steele got one final chance crushing a shot from 20 yards off the crossbar but Denver held on for the 4-3 win to leave the Kickers winless in Telluride.