Dan Sherman
Asst. SID
Juniata College
814-641-3513
Reading, Pa., Juniata College men's soccer continued to play well and was able to ignite the offense against Penn State Berks earlier today. The Eagles scored three second half goals to hold off the Lions to finish their five game road trip with a win.
Juniata outshot its opponent 11-1 in the first half and 27-8 overall. The defense continued to play well, allowing only one Penn State shot through the first 45 and relenting to give up a shot on goal until the second half. James Johnson (Cumberland, Md. / Fort Hill) started the first half in net, with Garrett Lavelle (Eden, NY / Eden) finishing the match. Lavelle had the lone save on the day for the Eagles.
After seeing his team struggle for weeks offensively, head coach Dan Dubois was very pleased with how his team executed today, "All we've worked on in training is how we want and need to move the ball, where and when we need to move the ball. Today, we finally started to see some of that success. We had an attacking threat that we really haven't had."
Juniata scored the first goal of the contest ten minutes into the second half as Chandler Steffen (Lewisberry, Pa. / Red Land) redirected a free kick from Nick Weit (Lititz, Pa. / Warwick). Penn State tied the match at one all in the 66th minute on a thirty-yard snipe from Anthony Kidron. A minute later, Nick Stone-Weiss (North Olmsted, Oh. / North Olmsted) headed a cross from Dylan Thompson (Broomfield Co. / Peak to Peak Charter) over the keeper's head to regain the lead. The Lions scored in the 80th minute to tie the contest once again. However, the Eagles never let Penn State take the lead as in the final minutes of play Stone-Weiss dribbled through the defense and scored to put Juniata on top 3-2 and seal the win.
The team was able to get a lot of experience for players, getting a lot of guys into the match today. Dubois stated that the win was, "a learning experience for a lot of guys. It puts us in a better position going into a conference game this weekend. We have a tough conference match coming up. Its nice to finally come back home and playing in front of the home fans again is going to be great. We're looking forward to a great turnout and a great match on Saturday."
Juniata is now 3-10 and will return home to host Moravian in Landmark Conference play on Saturday, the 11th. The contest will begin at 1 p.m. at Winton Hill Field and will be immediately followed by the women's match at 3:30.
