Nights Under the Lights: Entry No. 4

Hey fellow Panthers, and welcome to entry four of “Nights Under the Lights,” where things have really started falling into place as we go into the final part of the season. We have found a bit of a rhythm on both the offensive and defensive sides to our game, which has definitely come through perseverance, hard work, and repetition on the training pitch. With five Horizon League victories on the trot, we can really start to look forward to the excitement of post-season coming up the first week of November!

Anyways, after a fantastic win away to Cleveland State, we had the next week to prepare for first-place challenging Wright State at Engelmann on the upcoming Saturday. It was a good week of preparation and despite the weather conditions, everyone was raring to go against a top side in our conference. After a hard fought first half, we went into the locker room one nil down, but we had looked confident and still had high hopes of coming away with a result. We took the beginning of the second half by the scruff of the neck and got our reward through Evan Conway who tied it up at one apiece. Against the run of play Wright State regained the lead, but not for long before Jaime Colin put the ball into the back of the goal off a low cross from captain Jason Svensson. At the end of 90 minutes it was knotted at two goals each, but we all knew we deserved three points. With that belief, came a sudden death goal from Evan Conway just under five minutes into overtime! It was potentially our biggest win of the season, and teams around the league were really starting to take notice of our recent results and performances.

That game gave us even more confidence leading up to our next Horizon League game in ‘Motor City’ against the University of Detroit Titans. We had another full week to recover and prepare for the trip to Detroit, which was another crucial match where we expected nothing less than three points. Arriving to the match, most of us knew the atmosphere wasn’t going to be great so we were determined to make something out of nothing and create a positive environment for ourselves. We took control of the match from the start, and despite a defensive error and going down a goal fairly early, we continued to create lots of chances and looked very dangerous. Nick Moon scored our lone goal of the half, and we went into half time wanting even more. Reid Stevenson found himself in the right place at the right time to find our game winner, and Evan Conway found himself on the score sheet yet again. A convincing away win against a very tough opposition who looked to get the ball in the air as much as possible, it was a very positive ride home back to MKE.

After two full weeks of preparing for the past two matches, we had a quick turn around against in-state rivals Wisconsin-Madison. Madison is a top side amongst division one this season, and were making a name for themselves amongst the top schools with some good results and resounding performances. However, we knew we were in a very good place with some great performances on our backs, and we were all eager to test ourselves against some of the best around the nation. The air was brisk, and it felt like a true late October night, and the game started off a bit slow where each team assessed the other out. The match picked up in the second half, and chances occurred at each end, with Freddy Lorenzen coming up with two spectacular saves. Big time keepers come up in big time games when the team isn’t playing at the top of their game, and Freddy made sure to give us the best chance possible to carve something out of this one. The match ended nil-nil through overtime, but we showed resilience and proved we weren’t going to be merely pushed aside like many may have thought prior to the match up.

Our attention turned back to conference play, where we’d slowly moved our way up the rankings and were fighting for a top spot. IUPUI were up next at home, and they’d struggled throughout the season to pick up results, but we knew they’d be playing without any pressure and we were ready for the fight. Another brisk night at Engelmann, where we honored our four seniors Magnus Flaatedal, Nick Moon, Reid Stevenson, and Jonathan Stadler, who are big time leaders for our group in different ways and have shown that from the beginning of my career at UWM and throughout this season. We took control of this one from the very beginning, and both Jaime Colin and Evan Conway found the goal yet again early on in the match, and our dominance continued. Jake Kelderman opened up his account for the season after getting on the end of a Vuk Latinovich set piece, and from there it was a comfortable win that could have ended with plenty more goals for us.

Now, we look forward to our final match of the season in Michigan against the Oakland Grizzlies, who are fighting for postseason action as we fight for a top seed in hope of potentially hosting the conference tournament. Things are looking more positive than they have all season long, and we want to do our best to extend our season for as long as possible! Thanks for tuning in yet again, and hopefully there’s a lot more to celebrate come my next entry!

-Frankie

Nights Under the Lights: Entry No. 3

Hello again Panther fans, and welcome to the third entry of ‘Nights Under the Lights!”

We’ve seen a couple trophies, some competitive matches, and emotions flying all around us on and off the pitch, so there’s a lot to cover in this week’s entry! As I mentioned in my prior post, the season continues to fly by day-by-day and we can hardly catch our breath as we enter the final third, and possibly the most important part of our season. Our team has continued to grow and improve over the course of this season and we’ve definitely had several learning experiences together as a group, which have enabled us to look nothing but forward for the challenges ahead.

Picking up from last time where we came across a tough Belmont side, we took a couple days away from the field to reflect and we came back onto the pitch hungrier than ever. Northern Illinois was our next opponent, which included the second of three trophies on the line we’d fight for this season, the LeWang Trophy. We took the short bus ride down to Northern Illinois and we were eager to earn the trophy back after falling to them at home last year in the dying seconds. The game had a rather slow start as each team assessed one another, until Jaime Colin picked up the ball from about 30 yards out and picked out the top right hand corner! 1-0 up, and from there we established our dominance and fought for our lives. It was a very well-earned victory and a nice bus ride home with the LeWang trophy strapped in alongside captain Sean Reynolds.

We used that victory to fuel us going into another conference game against UIC at home on the upcoming Saturday. UIC knocked us out of the Horizon League Semifinal last season and both teams needed conference results, so it was set up for a high-paced and intense match. We came out of the blocks slow, and gave up two early goals, which made things very tough from the start. We earned one back from a Latinovich penalty but couldn’t find the net again and the match ended 2-1, which was somewhat disheartening from such a great performance a few days before. But as many teams will figure out during soccer season, you can’t dwell on the past and we immediately turned our focus to the exciting Milwaukee Cup against Marquette at Engelmann in three days time.

Since my freshmen year we had never won against Marquette, fall or spring, and no player on our current team had won the Milwaukee Cup during any fall season, so you can probably imagine how revved up our team was. Both coaches and players had an unbelievable amount of energy leading up to the match, and it showed when the match kicked off. We took off and pressed Marquette from minute one till the clock hit 90, nothing stopped us, and I’m sure our sophomore striker Evan Conway will tell you he hadn’t, nor will ever again, run that much in a match. Both seniors Reid Stevenson and Nick Moon scored, which made things that much sweeter for them to lift that trophy in front of our own fans at the end of the match.

We turned our attention back to conference, and while we left that result against Marquette in the past, we still had some of the juices running and wanted to keep that ball-rolling heading into the Northern Kentucky match up. We knew we had struggled in conference play, but we also knew one win could quickly turn things around and that’s what we did against Northern Kentucky. Another fantastic performance that lead to yet another 2-0 win, where we worked extremely hard, created a few good chances, which were taken by Evan Conway and Henrik Fennefoss, and things were looking up and there was a great vibe in the locker room after two well-earned victories.

Our attention quickly turned again to SIUE who we’d seen a couple times in my Panther career, but never in regular season play. They were always a competitive team that played good soccer, but we were on a high and felt we could take advantage of that. Unfortunately things didn’t go our way, and we came away with a 2-0 loss, which reflected our play. It was a rather unexpected performance, where energy lacked and the quality wasn’t quite there from us, perhaps so many games in a short amount of time. Either way, we weren’t making excuses because we knew the other team was in the same situation, so we took the match on the chin and had another quick turn around.

Cleveland State was up next, who had some positive results in conference play and were looking confident in securing an early playoff spot. We had spoiled their playoff hopes last year in the final match of the season with a last-minute goal, and our team wanted to come out and remind them of that result from last season. There was a sense that we were going to be an easy match for them, but we were determined to prove them we weren’t there for the taking. The first half ended a stalemate with limited chances on each end, but 15 minutes into the second half Nick Moon found himself bursting past his defender and slotting the ball in far post. Along with that, I was lucky enough to find myself on the score sheet with my first goal of the season, which gave us a 2-0 lead that we held onto till the end of the match! A confident display from us, and we feel as though we’re picking up some steam and getting hot at the perfect time. We’re still right in the mix of things regarding conference play and play off spots, so we will continue to fight every day and work for what we feel we deserve! Thanks for tuning in, a rather long entry this week but nonetheless we appreciate you keeping up with us!

-Frankie