Down a player, Whitefish rallies against Loggers

Even one man down, White-fish wouldn’t say die.

The Bulldogs rallied from two goals down with only 10 men on the pitch to narrowly avoid a season sweep by the Libby Loggers on Tuesday.

Sam Donaldson put away the game-tying goal in the 78th minute off of a perfect through-pass from Curran Edland to knot the final score of the league match at 2-2.

Whitefish was playing with 10 men due to a red card handed to Sean Janni at the end of the first half. Janni unintentionally used his hand to stop a shot on goal, which is an automatic red card. Although Libby missed the penalty kick awarded for the red card, they tacked on a goal late in the first to go up 1-0 at halftime.

“We didn’t want to allow that red card to be an excuse,” Whitefish coach O’Brien Byrd said. “We could have easily protected ourselves with that.”

After falling behind 2-0 in the second half, Steele finally broke through with a penalty kick in the 53rd minute. Donaldson’s heroic goal came 25 minutes later.

“For the guys to come back from two down with only 10 men, it was awesome to see,” Byrd said. “Today, we weren’t scared. We didn’t play with any fear.”