Club soccer attacks Kennesaw 3-1, ties Georgia Tech at zero

The men’s club soccer team traveled the past two weekends to take on Kennesaw State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Winning the first game against Kennesaw 3-1 and tieing the second game against Georgia Tech 0-0, the team’s defense continues to grow stronger as the season progresses.

“We played pretty well, overall. It was a pretty good improvement,” sophomore goalie Max Alford said.

On Saturday, Oct. 8, the team traveled to Kennesaw. Beginning the game with 11 players, the team suffered two injuries during the game, which left them in the end with nine men.

“It was a really weird game,” junior student coach Elliott Payne said. “We only had 11 players travel; you usually want 16. We played without subs.”

After scoring the first goal, freshman environmental science major Paul Murray rolled his ankle, which left him unable to continue playing. The score was 1-0 at this point, and GC was one man down.

Soon after the first injury of the game, Alford punted the ball, which hit one of the Kennesaw forwards in the back and knocked him down.

“The ball hit him in the back after I punted it,” Alford said. “ He stood up and tried to start fighting me, and that was it.”

The Kennesaw forward who tried to fight Alford received a red card, which left it 10 players against 10 players at the end of the first half. Kennesaw scored, and the score was 1-1 at half time.

At the beginning of the second half, freshman undeclared major Dylan Suhr scored two goals. Soon after these goals were scored, the team suffered its second injury when senior management information systems Andrew Perez was injured.

“Now we were 9 versus 10; we were up 3-1 and we basically just possessed them for the entire second half,” Payne said. “A lot of times they couldn’t get anywhere near the ball because we were passing it and moving it up the field. Their team basically started falling apart during the second half.”

Payne believes that staying mentally sharp and making smart decisions is key for keeping it together in the end of the game.

“We did this very well, especially playing with nine players,” Payne said.

The team ended the game with a 3-1 win.

“It’s rewarding when you have a win like that day,” Payne said. “Inside I was worried for a little bit, but you could kind of tell they were falling apart more than we were.”

The team hit the road again Friday, Oct.14, to take on Georgia Tech. The game ended with a 0-0 tie.

“The game went well, we had very good possession but our two starting forwards didn’t show up to the game so we couldn’t score,” Payne said. “I thought we had a lot of good moments but it was frustrating to not be able to finish, we had people out of position because of the lack of forwards.”

The tie against Georgia Tech gives GC a current record of two wins, two losses and two ties.

“We should have scored some goals, but we’ve had a big improvement on defense since last year,” said Alford. “I think we’re getting a lot better.”

The men’s club soccer team will play their final game of the season on Oct. 23 against Macon State College at the Georgia College women’s soccer team field at West Campus.

Posted by Katie LeVan on Oct 20 2011. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.