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
