Despite coming away with a 2-1 victory over Tawas on Wednesday at Wildcat Stadium, there wasn’t too much to for the Alpena High boys soccer team brag about after the game.

“If it was possible to be totally disgusted after winning a game, I’m disgusted because we played terrible,” Storch said. “Tawas was a far better team, but they had an unkind fate and sometimes sports works like that where the team that works the hardest and deserves to win, doesn’t. I have felt way better about our performances that have resulted in losses than I do after a day like today. We weren’t prepared to play, but we were tremendously fortunate.”

A goal from Kyle Supiran on a penalty kick with 41 seconds left gave the Wildcats a win in an otherwise ugly game. The win came after an ugly first half where the Wildcats didn’t play well and trailed 1-0 at halftime after a goal from Drake Nelson put the Braves ahead.

“The first half was so bad. The kids didn’t listen to word I said and it looked like they came out expecting to win because they had Alpena written on the front of their jerseys and thought that Tawas would cower at our presence, but that wasn’t the case at all,” Storch said.

The Wildcats were able to pick things up in the second half as they controlled the rest of the game, outshooting Tawas 9-0 in the second half.

For a while it looked as if Alpena’s strong play in the second half wouldn’t be enough after the poor showing in the opening half. The Wildcats had several scoring opportunities throughout the second half, but it took until the final seven minutes of the game for Alpena to tie the game up at a goal apiece.

Walker Martin scored on a corner kick assist from Tommy Hein with 6:57 left in the game to even the score.

The Wildcats continued to apply pressure and Evan LeTourneau had a chance to score the go-ahead goal with 1:12 remaining, but hit the crossbar and it looked like the game would end in a tie.

Alpena put together one final rush and had some luck on its side as Supiran was awarded a penalty kick with just 41 seconds to play.

Supiran cashed in on the opportunity and scored the game-winning goal to propel the Wildcats to victory on a night where they didn’t play up to their potential.

“I’ve always said that you always celebrate a victory because they are so hard to come by, but it will be hard to find good things that came out of this tonight other than we persevered even though we didn’t play well or hard and fortunately that was enough,” Storch said. “We lacked mental toughness and we played like the old Alpena team rather than the team that I have grown accustomed to coaching over the last year and a half.”

The Wildcats improve to 9-5-1 overall and will look to play better tonight against Big North Conference rival Traverse City Central on the road.

Jonny Zawacki can be reached via email at jzawacki@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5690.