Last weekend, the Trinity men’s soccer team traveled to Irving, Texas, and Colorado Springs, Colo., to compete in two conference games, defeating the University of Dallas Crusaders and the Colorado College Tigers. Trinity earned its fifth shutout win of the season against University of Dallas and beat Colorado College 5-1. Trinity is now 8-2-1 overall and 6-1-0 in conference games.
On Friday, Trinity defeated the University of Dallas 6-0, with four goals scored in the first half of the game. Senior defender and co-captain Jeff Hayes scored in the 22nd minute with an assist from senior forward Yuri Ribeiro. First-year defender Zac Treu scored six minutes later with an assist from sophomore midfielder Murray Fraser. Junior forward Johnny Lawson scored the next two goals for the Tigers within two minutes of each other. His first was in the 31st minute off an assist from first-year defender Francisco Vasquez, and his second was off a well-placed assist from senior midfielder Raz Forsten. Senior midfielder and co-captain Darren McAfee scored the first goal of the second half in the 56th minute, followed by a goal from Ribeiro in the 61st minute. Trinity had 36 shots to Dallas’s 9, 14 of which were shots on goal, while Dallas had one.
“With time and patience we were able to break them down, and I think it helped that they had to leave their best players on for pretty much the entire game because they didn’t have much depth, whereas we believed in all 22 players of our traveling squad and we used them all, and as a result we were able to bring different weapons onto the field at different times to attack their weaknesses and also just have fresher legs,” said assistant coach Edward Cartee.
On Sunday, Trinity defeated Colorado College 5-1. Ribeiro was the first to score for the Tigers with a goal in the 18th minute off a direct free kick from 25 yards out. Colorado College’s Sean Parham tied the game three minutes later with an assist from Christian Wulff. Trinity’s next four goals came in the second half of the game. Lawson scored his third goal of the weekend in the first three minutes of the second half off an assist from junior midfielder Victor Araujo. Araujo scored the next two goals, one off an assist from junior defender Simon Uribe and one from a penalty kick. Uribe scored Trinity’s last goal of the game in the 64th minute off a free kick from Araujo. Araujo’s performance last weekend earned him NSCAA Division III Men’s Player of the Week.
“In the second game, we really came together as a team. We were struggling in the first half so we made some adjustments at halftime and then we just really pulled together as a team; playing the ball better, moving quickly and scoring goals, most importantly. Overall, we played well. Getting two wins was big; that was our goal for the weekend, so to come home with those wins was great,” Treu said.
Junior goalie Matt Cardone recorded the first 70 minutes of the game with three saves, and sophomore goalkeeper Chad Margotta recorded the last 20 minutes with one save. Trinity had 10 shots on goal to Colorado College’s four.
“We had a lot of expectations going into the weekend, two must wins. Friday, we took care of business. On Sunday we started off slow against Colorado College, but in the second half we really came alive. Our attack was fantastic and our defense was solid,” Cardone said.
Trinity will meet both of these teams again this weekend, starting with the University of Dallas at 7 p.m. tonight and Colorado College at noon on Sunday.
“I think that we have more talent than they [Colorado College] do, but they’re definitely good enough to punish us for mistakes, so we just have to continue to stay solid. At this point in the year we’ve scored 42 goals and only given up six so with that kind of solid defensive record, if we can keep that up, I’m very confident that we’ll be able to beat them and go on to have a good run throughout the rest of the conference schedule,” Cartee said.
