M. Soccer upends Owls

After several frustrating losses, it looks like the Penn men's soccer team has finally found the net. "We knew there was one out there," senior Matt Stern said. Yesterday at Temple's Soccer Stadium, the Red and Blue emerged from their latest slump, scoring three overtime goals en route to a 5-2 thrashing of the cross-town rival Owls. Penn improved to 5-8-1, while Temple sank to 4-9-1. The Quakers started off strongly, but an early defensive lapse led to a quick goal for the Owls. Five minutes into the game, Temple's Shawn Vogel took advantage of a Quakers error in the back, booting one in from six yards out to put Temple ahead 1-0. From there, it was all Penn, as the Quakers took advantage of the space in the middle to move around and take control of the ball. "We kept our heads up this time and told ourselves that we still had 85 minutes left to go," Stern said. "We had an enormous number of shots after that and we never got down because we weren't scoring. We were controlling the ball though, and that gave us confidence." The Quakers dominated first-half play, taking 17 shots to Temple's four. The 17th shot was the charm. Forty minutes into the half, senior sweeper Mike Leo got the ball from 40 yards out and chipped it into the box, where co-captain Steve Marcinkiewicz took the ball on the chest and knocked it in to tie things up. In the second half, junior Max Engelhardt won the head ball off a Temple punt and flicked it to freshman Austin Root. Root took the ball, bolted downfield and scored, putting Penn ahead 2-1. As the game wore on, the Owls started pushing men forward, forcing Penn sweeper Leo to pick up a man. With less than one minute left in the contest, Temple's Dennis Mullen got into the box with the ball, Leo tried to make a tackle. Mullen went down and the ref called a penalty. Kevin McNally scored on the penalty kick to force the game into overtime. "It was a tough play," Stern said. "We let up a little late in the game, fell apart a bit, but we were able to collect ourselves for the overtime." Nine minutes into overtime, Marcinkiewicz ran up the left side of the field and took the ball off a feed from junior Read Goodwin, pushing it past the goalie to put Penn ahead 3-2. Afterwards, Temple continued to push men forward and started to let up on defense, creating numerous scoring opportunities for the Quakers. All season, the Quakers have lamented over their inability to capitalize on such scoring opportunities, but yesterday they were cured of whatever ailed them. Once they started scoring, they didn't stop. Temple's failing defense didn't hurt their chances. Less than 10 minutes later, senior Mike Schmidt got the ball off a pass from Stern and responded by scoring the first goal of his career. Schmidt tried for a second a few minutes later, but his shot hit a defender and flew off. Marcinkiewicz took the ball out of the air and struck a volley with his left foot, scoring his third goal of the game for the first hat trick of his collegiate career. He now has 11 goals and five assists this season. "It was a close game in the first half, but we dominated in the second half and in overtime," Root said. "We controlled the ball and we were clearly the better team." Particularly impressive was the fact Penn played without two key starters, goalie Andrew Kralik and midfielder Brendan Sullivan. Junior goalie Justin Ramsey did a nice job filling in for Kralik, giving up only one goal in his first start of the season. "We knew we had to step up because we were missing Andrew and Brendan," Stern said. "We knew a lot of those guys [on Temple] and there's mutual respect out there on the field, but we're here to win and we don't let games like that get away. Today's game was a gut check going into the last part of our season."