THUNDER BAY – The Thunder Bay Chill might have been guilty of taking Minneapolis City SC for granted.
It cost them their eight-game winning streak, and delayed at least for a day a chance to celebrate the team’s first USL League 2 division title since 2017.
Steevenson Lamarre scored a pair of second-half goals on Friday night, including one in injury time, as the visiting team from the Twin Cities battled back to earn a 2-2 draw against the front-running Chill, who would have clinched the Deep North Division with a win.
“It is incredible,” said Lamarre, who came off the bench to play hero for Minneapolis, his team reduced to just 10 men on the pitch after Curtis Wagner was handed a red card in the 87th for tripping up Thunder Bay’s Sullivan Silva on a break.
“That was a good group of guys we were playing against, and the season hasn’t been going our way, but we’re a team that doesn’t stop fighting and the end, I was like I’m going to take a chance and take the next step. I’m not ready to give up on my team.”
For Minneapolis, it was just their sixth point of a one-win sophomore season, but it was by far their biggest point yet.
Lamarre, who missed the past two seasons with an injury, said the tying goal brought forth emotions he had trouble putting into words.
It was also a thing of beauty.
“It was a long cross by my teammate Hakeem (Morgan). The deflection, I was at the back post, took one touch to take the defender on and then finished on the first post,” Lamarre said.
It’s a frustrating way to lose, said veteran Chill striker Silva.
“It’s tough to finish like that, but I think mentally we’ve got to be ready for the next game. It’s part of the game. Sometimes you are going to have bad moments like that, but that’s how we’re going to bounce back.”
The Chill, with one game left in their 12-game regular season schedule, are still sitting pretty in the Deep North Division at 8-1-2, giving them an eight-point cushion over second-place RKC Third Coast (6-3-0), the lone team that can still catch them for top of the table.
They’ll wrap up the regular season on Wednesday against Bavarian United SC, another one-win team that sits at the bottom of the Deep North standings.
“We’re were sloppy today and we said at the beginning, you can’t take any teams lightly in this league. You have to play every game,” said Chill coach Tony Colistro. “We were maybe a little bit fatigued from Wednesday’s difficult game, but we should have done better.”
Once again it was Hugo Tavares, with another incredible move deep in Minneapolis territory, who scored the game’s first goal, the tally coming in the 39th minute of play.
They’d add another five minutes into the second half, Karim Abdoul Pare cutting inside off a corner kick and burying it top shelf. But the two-goal advantage had just a five-minute shelf life, as Lamarre pounced on a rebound off a free kick at the top of the Thunder Bay box and punched it past Chill keeper Nathanael Sallah to reduce their opponent’s lead to 2-1.
In the 63rd the Chill’s Brandon Bermingham had a tremendous chance to restore the two-goal lead, but just missed putting his head on a cross from Jan-Lucas Engels.
Thunder Bay, who claimed a playoff spot two days earlier, can clinch the Deep North Division at home on Wednesday, but can also take the title if RKC Third Coast loses or ties any of its remaining games, starting with Bavarian United on Saturday.
