Sports

A rocky start in RMAC

Men's soccer is 1-1 after rough conference play

By Keith Franklin
cfrankl7@mscd.edu

Following its 5-2 win on Wednesday, Sept. 7 over the Regis University Rangers, the Metro men's soccer team found itself in a game that featured more yellow cards than goals. The Roadrunners suffered their first defeat of the season Friday to No. 14 ranked Fort Lewis by a 0-3 score.

The game against the Rangers was aggressive from the beginning. There was pushing and shoving from both teams and the referee, at times, seemed a bit lopsided with his calls, with Metro bearing the brunt.

At the start, both teams controlled the ball well on offense. Each moved deep into their opponent's territory and had an equal amount of shot attempts.

Eight minutes in, Metro came up with the first goal and set the tone for what was to become an in-your-face, grudge match. Antonio Porras had the ball deep in the right corner and crossed it to the middle where Zack Cousins banged it in for an authoritative score.

Regis got its first goal at 14:42 on what appeared to be a punched ball. After the game, goalkeeper David McReavy said it was a blown call by the officials.

Metro held Regis scoreless with strong defense for the remainder of the half while scoring twice more on offense.

Just before halftime, Metro's Aldo Alcaraz-Reza was carded twice for aggressive play. He was ejected and Metro played the rest of the game with 10 players. By this time it didn't matter. Regis was visibly tired and growing frustrated with each passing minute.

Metro scored two more times in the second half, equaling their output from the first two games combined. With 30 minutes left to play, the starters were pulled and everyone got a chance to play.

The game ended with Metro winning by a score of 5-2. Mark Cromie had two goals, both on direct free kicks that he blew past the defense. Shaun Elbaum also had two to follow his hat trick from the previous game.

"I was pleased with the way the game turned out," said head coach, Ken Parsons. "We had an opportunity to get some rest for a lot of starters before an equally important game on Friday against Fort Lewis." In the win, freshman RMAC preseason Player-of-the-Year, Pat Laughlin got to see his first action of the season. He had been sidelined with a knee injury.

"The leg feels great," said Laughlin. I was just cleared today to play."

Things seemed to be going Metro's way.

The same can't be said for the Roadrunners' next game.

After a 30-minute rain delay, Friday's game began aggressively. From the start, there was a lot of pushing and shoving by both teams in an attempt to stake out territory.

The wet grass made hard passes next to impossible and many cross-field passes skipped harmlessly out-of-bounds. The field conditions turned out to be favorable for Fort Lewis and their star forward John Cunliffe of Edgworth, England. He made pinpoint passes in contributing one goal and two assists.

While the first half was a scoreless defensive stand and the second turned out to be mostly offensive. Metro immediately pressed the ball into the Fort Lewis backfield and a few near misses turned out to be the difference in the ballgame.

It soon became apparent that the team with the first goal would likely be the victor. Unfortunately, that first goal went to Fort Lewis. Cunliffe took a direct free kick about 30 yards out from the goal. He lofted it nice and slow over the mix of players, lulling the 'keeper into waiting for the second touch. That second touch never came and the ball sailed gently into the corner of the net.

Metro became visibly disheartened after the first goal, and for a short time looked like a group of individuals rather than a team. They no longer attempted to pass the ball; each team member tried to win it alone. Fort Lewis' defense denied Metro every opportunity and their offense was able to score insurance goals.

"I really felt whoever scored the first goal was going to win the game," said Fort Lewis head coach Jeremy Gunn. "Once we got that goal, it just gave us a little bit more of an opening to go at them. They had to come at us a bit more and that's really why we ended up scoring the extra goals."