It didn’t come easy, but United Floors captured its fifth consecutive Williams Lake Men’s Futsal League championship Tuesday night in the lakecity.
After regulation and 10 minutes of overtime solved nothing, the game came down to penalty kicks where United Floors connected on all three of its attempts in a 4-3 title win over Celtic Engineering, with United Floors goalkeeper Curt Levens shutting the door on all three of Celtic Engineering’s attempts.
Levens also put United Floors on the board first, taking a run from his own goal and blasting a shot past Celtic Engineering keeper Travis Nystoruk to give his side a 1-0 lead.
Sean Fogerty tied it up for Celtic Engineering midway through the half, before Sean Glanville found the back of the net to give his team a one-goal lead. Just prior to the end of the first half, however, Matt Munkittick evened it up once again sending the contest into the second half deadlocked at 2-2.
Glanville continued to roll in the second half, finding the twine on a blast from 15 feet out, to extend United Floors lead to 3-2, but Celtic Engineering refused to lie down.
Utilizing a longer bench and fresh substitutions, Celtic Engineering poured on the pressure late in the second half, where Munkittick notched his second of the game to send it into overtime.
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And when frantic end-to-end action didn’t result in a winner, the championship came down to penalty kicks.
Grant Gustafson, Russell Myers-Ross and Glanville each converted on their attempts in the shootout to continue the team’s run of dominance in the league.
“This was definitely the toughest playoff win for us of the five,” Glanville said.
“We needed a miracle comeback from 4-0 down in the second half to beat Pinnacle Pellet 5-4 in the semis, and obviously the final was very close and could have gone either way.
“Fortunately for us we were lights out in the shootout.”
Glanville said in his almost 20 years in the futsal league he can’t recall a time the final was decided on penalties, so it was a fitting end to the year as both United Floors and Celtic Engineering have had extremely close battles all season long.
“Our goalie, Brent Gardner, was away so we were forced to put Curt (Levens) in goal and he’s one of our top offensive guys so we had to play a much more defensive style.”
sports@wltribune.com
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