ONU Men's Soccer Flowing with Confidence!

        The Polar Bears have been making it happen the past couple of weeks. Starting off the OAC with Mount Union, Otterbein, and Capital and walking away with seven of the nine points available. It is safe to say that the boys have started to click with each other and come away with some hard fought results. Today, ONU Men's Soccer traveled to Tiffin to face off against Heidelberg who doesn't have a great track record against OAC. However, we knew that this team wasn't going to just roll over and let us win. We knew that scoring a few goals early was going to get the job done to comfortably get the three points. As the first whistle blew, the Polar Bears scored within the first five minutes of the game with a goal by Freshman winger Colin Gottron. Once we opened the scoring, the nerves were relaxed and we were able to play some great soccer. Moving the ball around, taking shots from many different angles, and scoring in all different fashions, the boys were doing it all today. As the halftime whistle blew, the score was 5-1. However, we were not satisfied. We knew that in order to gain the most goal differential we would have to score five more goals in the second half. The boys stayed hungry for goals in the second half, striking another goal home in the first five minutes again. We were able to get all of the bench players in that don't have that much experience in an OAC level competition. The final whistle blew and it is safe to say we achieved our goal of winning 10-1. It was a solid performance on both sides and this was exactly what the boys needed heading into the toughest match-up of the season against John Carroll. 

        Although we had a lot of great takeaways from the game against Heidelberg, we have to put that game behind us and focus on the next task which is preparing for John Carroll. The Blue Streaks are heading into this game with a strong record of 9-2-1. This John Carroll team is packed with talent all over the field with lots of depth as well. However, we have just as much talent and depth and we know that this game could go any direction. The games between us have normally been a coin flip every year. Sometimes John Carroll comes out on top, and so do we sometimes. Last year, we went to their place and beat them 2-1 in the late stages of the OAC to win the OAC regular season. With that being said, hopefully the boys can repeat last year and defend our OAC regular season title. This will be a true test to the boys ability to play for each other and not back down from some adversity throughout the game. We have shown in past games that we can get results against strong opponents. We just need to keep the pedal down and do our best to score early and play solid team defense to get a result against a team like John Carroll. The boys have had to travel to John Carroll the past two seasons and now we have the opportunity for the next two seasons to defend our home turf. There is a lot of anticipation leading up to this game for both teams because this is a game that will make or break a shot at the OAC title for both teams. 

The boys will compete on Saturday 10/14 at 1:00pm on Kerscher Stadium. See you all there!

Go Bears!