Ryan Ladika/MDN Magi soccer head coach Creighton Bachmeier (front, in black) addresses his team prior to Minot’s Tuesday afternoon practice at Duane Carlson Stadium.

It was a brisk Thursday, October 12 across the Peace Garden State, and the Minot High boys’ soccer team had already loaded up the bus and was preparing to make its way to Fargo, North Dakota to compete for the 2006 North Dakota Class A Soccer State Championship when Mother Nature threw a wrench in the planned festivities.

“We got a snowstorm in Fargo, and they moved the tournament to Bismarck,” then-Magi midfielder and current Minot head coach Creighton Bachmeier recalled. “We were on the bus heading to Fargo, and they said ‘no, we’re canceling it.’ There was too much snow.”

Minot, having just clinched its second consecutive Western Dakota Association title, had already fallen painfully short of realizing its state championship dreams in each of the previous two seasons.

The Magicians were also forced to push through their final regular-season game and the first few postseason contests without their star player and reigning Gatorade Player of the Year, Isak Tengesdal, after he suffered a sprained MCL.

Faced with yet another challenge, the team simply regrouped and rerouted to the capital city the next day, where the Magi would later put the finishing touches on the first, and only, state championship in program history with a 2-1 victory in overtime over Grand Forks Central.

Bachmeier, who admitted he was not much of a goal-scorer during his high school career, came through for his team throughout the playoffs in more ways than one; he helped facilitate the offense at his position and scored a goal and an assist in the pool play segment of the postseason before assisting on a Tengesdal score in the title game, all under the watchful eye of then-Magi head coach and current Majettes head coach Matt Pfau.

Pfau and Bachmeier like to joke that they are joined at the hip, as both held integral roles in the ’06 boys’ title as well as the more recent spring 2021 Majettes’ state championship when Bachmeier served as an assistant coach.

What that fact has in store for the boys’ team this year, Bachmeier is not sure, as Pfau is not currently directly involved with the club.

“He can’t win a title without me, and right now I haven’t won a title without him,” Bachmeier said with a laugh. “Maybe we need to ask (Minot High Athletic Director) Mr. Lunde to see if we can get a seventh coach, add Matt Pfau to us as a statistician or something. We’ve got the ‘Magician Tradition,’ as a lot of people like to say.”

Looking back on the Magicians’ run to immortality 15 years ago, the duo sees striking similarities between the ’06 team and the squad Bachmeier now oversees, currently preparing to play for the sixth WDA championship in team history after a dominant regular season.

“This year’s team, when you watch them play, they have their studs with Ezra (Hagerott) and (Brayden) Oswalt leading the charge,” Pfau said. “Their defense is really sound, and that’s what we had back in ’06 too. We had our studs who could go score a goal like they have this year, too, so I really think it is a similar group of kids as far as the way they play.”

In net for the ’06 Magi was Sam Love, a bit of a “crazy goalie” as Pfau recalls who would run through a brick wall for his team in order to save a goal, who backstopped his team to a 16-5-2 overall record.

Junior JJ Dufner has held down the goalposts for the Magi this year, helping his team to the most regular-season conference wins in WDA history with 12, a 14-1-1 overall record entering the postseason, and six shutouts.

The role of this year’s Tengesdal could be claimed by a number of players, including Hagerott, who has potted a team-high eight goals and added seven more assists. Oswalt has complemented his three goals with a team-leading nine assists, and Syrus Mayne has also been an offensive force with seven goals of his own.

Bachmeier has pointed numerous times to his team’s ability to win games “in a variety of ways,” and it certainly has appeared in the 16 final scores.

The Magi have displayed an innate ability to pull out wins in tight contests, as 11 of its 14 wins have been achieved by two or fewer goals. Minot also registered more comfortable victories by three against Mandan Aug. 26 and Williston Aug. 31, as well as a 7-0 blowout of the Braves Sept. 18.

With the team’s second state championship within reach, Bachmeier and Pfau each have hopes for the team to produce a strong showing in the postseason to give this year’s club a chance to experience what they did 15 years ago.

“I think it would be really cool for our city, just to have that happen in the same calendar year,” Pfau said, referring to the possibility of two Minot soccer titles in one year. “They’ll be able to talk about it forever, so that would be really cool. I sure hope they can have a good weekend here and get to the ultimate goal.”

“It would be so satisfying for the players,” Bachmeier added. “That’s why we do this, we want these kids to understand that if you put in the work, and the necessary initiative every single day, you get rewarded. We are going to give it our absolute best effort these next two weeks to put us in the best chance to do it.”