Fargo South-Shanley Wins First State Title in Program History

BRUINS UPSET THE ROUGHRIDERS IN TRIPLE OVERTIME EN ROUTE TO PROGRAM'S FIRST STATE TITLE.

GRAND FORKS, ND–

The Fargo South-Shanley Bruins had an answer for the G.F. Red River Roughriders all night. Trailing by 1 goal on two separate occasions, the Bruins tied the game each time. The game would go scoreless through two overtimes. In the third OT, John Lang netted his second goal of the game to give the Bruins the 3-2 triple OT victory.

The scorer of the game-winner, John Lang spoke about his emotion following the game-winner. “You know, I got it…I saw I had opportunity… had some space… cut the D… shot it… saw it went in, said Lang. “And then from there, I don’t know, just kind of blacked out in excitement.”

For the first time in school history… the South-Shanley Bruins are state champions.

The bruins fell behind early after Michael Coleman netted the first goal late in the first period for the roughriders. But the Bruins had a response every time. Trevor Moe tied the game late in the second with a power play goal. Then John Lang tied the game again after Red River took the lead back in the third.

After going into a third overtime and seeing the game winner in the back of the net, Head Coach Dean French knew the Bruins needed that game-winner at that time and he shared his initial emotions.

“Just thrilled because we didn’t have much left,” said Coach French. “It had to be soon or or it wasn’t gonna go our way, so we were just thrilled.”

The bruins fell to the Roughriders in the EDC Championship less than a week before last night’s rematch. Lang and Coach French were eager for the opportunity to defeat them.

“We beat them twice before,” said Land. “We knew if we stick to our game we could beat them.”

“We knew we would see these guys again, or we were hoping we’d see these guys again,” said Coach French. “If we did we we had a couple of tricks or something we like to keep up our sleeves.”

As for winning the first state title in school history….

“It means a lot, obviously, you know, it’s obviously a big chance to knock off red river in the state title,” said Lang. “There’s only been 15 teams, but now we’re in the 16th. So, it’s pretty exciting.”

“What we’ve been trying to teach his kids is to pursue their dreams to put themselves out there and go for it,” said Coach French. “Even if you lose, it will hurt, but you got to go for it. One of the things we talked about in between periods and in between the overtimes was, you know, we could be satisfied with what we did and we could have gotten complacent that well if we lose, we lose. But instead we decided to go for until the bitter end and fight and fight when we had almost nothing left.”

They had just enough left. And that game-winning goal will live on in Bruins history for a long time to come.