The Warriors men’s soccer team extended their losing streak to a season-high three games with their loss to the Brock Badgers on Sept. 27.</p>
“I thought that was a very winnable game,” Michael Yuhasz, assistant coach of the men’s soccer team, said about the match.
The Warriors jumped out to a quick 1-0 lead in the 22nd minute of the first half as Logan Phenuff headed in a corner kick by Mohammad Amin Nafar for his first goal of the season.
Defense remained tight as the Warriors managed to keep the Badgers off the scoreboard for the remainder of the half, while the offense kept the pressure on as Yusuf Khaled and Jae Jin Lee had golden opportunities to extend the Warriors lead, but failed to capitalize.
Despite the strong start for the Warriors, the Badgers came out firing in the second half. Just 10 minutes into the the half, the Badgers tied the game at one as Omar Hamadi put one past UW goalie Hansel Paico-Avilez.
Both teams kept the pressure on throughout the second half until the Badgers’ Eric Serafino scored a late goal in the 83rd minute to secure a 2-1 victory.
Yuhasz questioned the officiating of the game and believes it may have factored into the final result.
“The referee let things go quite a bit,” he said. “I thought he could have put some more cards up. But credit to Brock who came out a lot stronger in the second half and really attacked the net.”
With the loss, the Warriors now fall to 2-7-0 on the season and are second to last in the OUA standings. Despite this recent slide, Yuhasz has his sights on the playoffs, and if his team falls short, he would not view the season as a failure.
“A couple of years ago we set out to rebuild the program; this is our second year of the rebuilding of the program. For two years in a row we’ve made some big changes including letting go of senior guys and focusing on first- and second-year guys,” he said.
However, Yuhasz believes the program can only go as far as the resources the university is willing to allocate to it.
“It would be nice if the university could give us more money to spend on our program. Recruitment is pretty much done a free basis,” Yuhasz said. “There are no resources for coaching upgrades, again that comes out of our dime. We are still one of the teams in the university that don’t have training gear … We’re still playing in last year’s uniforms.”
In other soccer action, the Warriors women’s soccer team also took on the Brock Badgers and fared well, winning the match by a score of 1-0 at Warrior Field.
Both teams were evenly matched and the difference in play was as tight as the final score. The lone goal of the game was scored by Warriors’ Natalie Villegas — the first in her CIS career.
With the victory the Warriors extended their season-high winning streak to two, while moving past Brock in the OUA standings to 7th overall.
