WAVE RING IN NEW YEAR WITH WELL ROUNDED DEFEAT OF SIDEKICKS
Tuesday, December 31, 2024 - Milwaukee, WI - In front of Milwaukee’s largest crowd all season, the Milwaukee Wave defeated the Dallas Sidekicks 9-2, in an almost carbon copy game of Saturday, had it not been for a Jamie Lovegrove goal midway through the 4th quarter.
Milwaukee would find the net first at 4:12 of the first quarter, when Andre Hayne (Alex Steinwascher) beat goalkeeper Juan Gamboa high and to the far post to give Milwaukee the early lead.
Javi Steinwascher would double Milwaukee’s lead at 13:58 of the first, with an unassisted goal after a scramble in the box.
Dallas would cut the deficit to 1, when Anthony Powell would get a 1v1 opportunity against William Banahene at 7:13 of the second quarter, capitalizing on his chance.
The Wave would go on to rattle off six consecutive goals before the Sidekicks could answer, with the first coming from Derek Huffman (Alex Steinwascher) as his chip to the back post at 8:46 of the 2nd, would extend Milwaukee’s lead to 3-1 going into the halftime interval.
Milwaukee would start out the second half with an early penalty for too many men at 00:58, which sent Andre Hayne to the box to serve. Milwaukee would be able to kill off the penalty, and benefit from the field position as time expired as Andre Hayne (Cesar Correa) would get his second of the evening at 3:11 of the third, with a 1v1 that beat Gamboa low.
This wouldn’t be Milwaukee’s only trip to the box, when Dallas challenged a handball outside the box on goalkeeper William Banahene and were successful, resulting in another shootout opportunity, and the return of Augie Rey in net.
Just like Saturday, although this time Esai Romero, lined up to take the opportunity, Rey came up big again, stopping Romero, and preserving Milwaukee’s 4-1 advantage.
Milwaukee would extend their lead to 5-1 at 12:19, when Ian Bennett (Mario Alvarez) would capitalize on the power play, for a too many men infraction on Dallas.
Just like he did at the end of the first frame, Javi Steinwascher scored late in the third at 13:03 to extend Milwaukee’s advantage to 6-1.
The fourth quarter, would see Milwaukee score 00:14 into the final frame, when a back heel by Ian Bennett (Mario Alvarez) beat Gamboa once again, and extend Milwaukee’s lead to 7-1.
Alex Sanchez would close out the scoring for Milwaukee at 3:47 (Shaun Azcueta) and at 12:08, to give Milwaukee 18 goals in 2 games.
Sandwiched in between there was a Jamie Lovegrove (Anthony Powell) goal at 07:28 of the 4th.
Augie Rey once again, came up huge for Milwaukee in the shootout, and 4th quarter, and feels the team gives him confidence.
“coming in was you know, it's always a little difficult. It’s different, but it felt good. The team gives me confidence and that's part of the job and yeah, came in and got it done.”
Willie B had so much praise for Augie, and the team.
“Ah, no, it was a good team win, you know, back to back, good results. Um, you know, they ended up giving us our only loss so far of the season, so, you know, it's important to make a statement to to them and the league. I'm glad to play my part. super proud of my partner Auggie, you know, that's two nights in a row he came in made some big saves to keep us at one at the time, so, you know, you got it's extremely hard to come in cold and be locked in like that, so all my all my praise goes straight to all the team.”
The Steinwascher brothers, had a game to remember earning player of the game honors, with Javi registering 2 goals and Alex getting 2 assists on the night.
Javi thought it was a good performance all around
“It was a good performance from everyone all around. I think we had a slow start, but uh once we got the ball rolling, we just kept doing the right thing. There was a couple of times we got caught in the transition game, but when we were able to slow it down, I think we were able to play like some of our best soccer. Second half, I think we started similar to the first half where we were a little bit slow. We obviously had the two blue cards, but our man down team did a did a great job killing it both times.“
Javi included in this effort, with 3 blocks on the defensive side.
“It’s always nice to score, especially at home, but I mean, I had the easy job. Some of the other guys did all the hard work all I had to do was make an easy one time finish, so a lot of credit goes to the other guys who made it all happen.”
Alex Steinwascher is happy to be in Milwaukee
“It was a real good performance, guys on the team did real well, and I mean, on both of my assists, really guys got open and made it pretty easy. I gave Andre a pretty horrific pass, but he did well to deal with it and then same thing with Huffman. It's great finish for him and quite happy to be here and all the boys, I mean, they make it really easy, so it's good good experience, good time and awesome to be here I love it.”
Giuliano Oliviero was happy with the teams attitude
“Having Dallas three times in a row, never easy and I give them a lot of credit. I thought they played a really good first half and give credit to our guys, our players, just staying on their front foot and and wearing Dallas down and just, you know, really, really tough attack is really tough to consistently stop. I love the guy's attitude, you know, they kept pushing and pushing and pushing. They wanted to put a show on for the great crowd and I thought they did that.”
Tickets are on sale now at MilwaukeeWave.com or at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena Box office one hour prior to first kick.