ABOVE: Fairmont's Leonardo Fortin tracks a lobbed pass to gain control inside the Crusaders penalty box in a nonconference soccer match Saturday at Kot Fields.

FAIRMONT – The Fairmont Cardinals boys soccer team cruised by the Mankato Loyola Crusaders 14-1 on Saturday, outshooting their opponent 40-3 securing the victory heading into the final stretch of the regular season.

“We scored early, but then we kind of just fell off for a while there in the first half and got lazy and so we’re trying to hold them accountable to play at our full potential for the second half,” said Fairmont head soccer coach Brady Meyer. “I think we did, we came back out in the second half and played better. Played how we should be playing for an entire half.”

Fairmont’s offense came out shooting, scoring early on in the first minute of the game coming off of the boot of Ricardo Morales Herrera, who found some space in the Crusader’s penalty box and was able to tuck the ball past the opposing keeper. The Cardinals kept their foot on the gas, scoring again in the third and eighth minute. The first goal came courtesy of Angle Sanchez, assisted by Leonardo Fortin, while the goal in the eighth came again from Sanchez, this time assisted by Dani Castillo.

The Cardinals were overpowering the Crusader defense in the later half of the first. Sanchez buried his third goal in the 34th minute to secure the hat trick before Castillo knocked one past the keeper in the 40th minute closing out the half.

The second half became a cleaner, more fundamentally driven game for the Cardinals which maintained their pace on the scoreboard. A precise throw by Vaughn Thompson connected with a Fortin header that beat the outstretched hand of the Crusaders keeper for the Cardinals’ first goal of the half. Castillo scored again off of a pass from Sanchez. Just seven minutes later an unfortunate bounce off of a Crusader defender led to an own goal. It was the 54th minute that the Cardinals struck again this time courtesy of Luis Martin.

Jackson Bremmer joined the scoring in the 58th minute, followed up by yet another Sanchez goal four minutes later. Marco Morales Chavez was able to add to the tally, before a penalty set up a Crusaders penalty kick, scoring off the shot of Oliver Schull for the Crusaders’ first and only goal. Fortin found the net one final time securing the win for the Cardinals.

With only a couple of games left in the regular season the Cardinal’s vision is shifting to the playoffs.

“We still can’t take them lightly and we’ve got to be ready for the next couple of games. We’ve got playoffs coming up here soon,” said Meyer. “So we just didn’t want to be like, ‘Oh, this is like an off day.’ We were just really pushing, ‘Hey, let’s play our game. Let’s take this seriously.'”

The Cardinal take on South Minnesota Christian at Kot Fields today, Tuesday.