Sometimes a single goal is all you need and on Saturday afternoon that was all that Minnesota Aurora needed to get past RKC Third Coast in the sixth match of the USLW season. Ai Kitagawa's 58th minute scorcher was the only one scored by either side on the afternoon and enough to get Aurora a 1-0 win on Pride Night and extend their record to 6-0-0.
With just a single day between matches manager Jen Larrick made some heavy changes to the squad with eight new players in the eleven. Only Haylee Mersereau, Kyra Karfonta, and Ai Kitagawa remained in the eleven from Aurora domination of Madison on Thursday night.
Northland Soccer Journal
Minnesota Aurora started off the match with the typical high press and pushing hard for a goal. RKC responded by dropping every player into the box in order to prevent a goal, even at the expense of their attack. The combination of styles resulted in the first half hour being played heavily within the midfield and most of Aurora chances being blocked near the top of the box and cleared out. That resulted in the match heading to the break as a nil-nil draw 0-0, the first time all season Aurora has not scored in first half of football.
Coming out of the break Larrick brought on five substitutes to beat the heat and the RKC defence. This included defender Jelena Zbiljic making her first appearance since her 2025 knee injury. The changes showed force immediately as Aurora continued to pressure RKC from the word go. 15 minutes into the second half Aurora finally broke the deadlock with Ai Kitagawa sending a rocket into goal from just outside the box following a pass from Gracie Dunaway.
Minnesota nearly scored again not long after Kitagawa's goal. Following a foul near box, Maia Tabion fired a shot on the free kick forcing goalkeeper Ella Kratochvil to make a fantastic save to keep the visitors in the match. As the match winded towards the final whistle RKC started to break out to try and score. Though most of the Gulls shots missed the target, they did force goalkeeper Isaac Ranson to make a few savesto keep Aurora in the lead to win a toughly contested match.
