News Photo by Jonny Zawacki Alpena’s Noah Carstens (right) goes up to head a ball past Gaylord defender Cole Thompson during a Big North Conference soccer game on Thursday at Wildcat Stadium.

After earning their first Big North Conference win of the season on Tuesday and riding a four game winning streak heading into Thursday’s matchup against Gaylord.

Unfortunately for the Wildcats, they had a bit of a letdown, coming out flat and dropping a pivotal game to the visiting Blue Devils by a score of 2-0 at Wildcat Stadium.

“It’s extremely disappointing. I think that’s a lesson to athletes when you forget to bring your work ethic to a game and clearly we got outworked from the opening whistle and all of the warnings I gave prior to the game went unheated and even at halftime nothing improved,” Alpena coach Tim Storch said. “Gaylord was the team that wanted it more and usually when you want it more you create your own breaks and they did tonight.”

Despite Alpena not coming out of the gates with its best effort, both teams played a scoreless first half that didn’t feature many scoring chances for either side.

The Wildcats put some pressure on late, but failed to get a good look at the net and the best scoring chance for either team came with just seconds remaining when Gaylord had a ball just go wide of the Alpena net.

“I told them that Gaylord is known for working hard and that if we couldn’t match their work ethic then we were in for a long night and clearly we never came close to matching their work ethic,” Storch said. “It’s very disappointing because it certainly takes a lot off of beating Traverse City Central. When you’re unable to string performances together, it doesn’t really show that you’re of a certain level yet and I think that’s where we are. We are a team that can rise to certain occasions, but can’t maintain the consistency.”

The Blue Devils came out firing on all cylinders to begin the second half and made life difficult for the Wildcats, including goalkeeper Wenton Harrison who did his best to keep Alpena in the game by making two solid saves within the first ten minutes of the half.

The Wildcats were unable to respond and Gaylord broke the scoreless tie with a goal with 17:31 left in the game when Tyler Ashley scored off of a pass from the corner. A perfect pass was delivered and Ashley did not miss his chance, deflecting the ball off of his body and into the back of the Alpena net.

The Wildcats appeared to wake up late and did all they could to try and create scoring chances, but were unable to do so and eventually committed an infraction in the box down at the other end of the field and Gaylord was awarded a penalty kick with 1:01 remaining.

Gabe Kleinsorge cashed in on the golden opportunity and ripped a shot off of the crossbar that deflected into the back of the net to put the game on ice.

“We weren’t winning balls and we weren’t defending well,” Storch said. “It’s hard to say if this loss will light a spark in us or not. That’s up to the leadership of this group. It doesn’t get any easier from here and you wonder if we’re a team that peaked too early and it does get a lot tougher next week and we will certainly be tested.”

Alpena drops to 10-5-3 overall on the season and is now 1-3-3 in BNC play.

The Wildcats host a Cadillac team on Tuesday who has been in and out of first place in the conference all season long.