After a less-than-ideal road trip last week, which saw the SFU men’s soccer team drop twenty spots in the national rankings, SFU returned home to Terry Fox Field on Thursday, October 5. The Clan hosted the Northwest Nazarene University (NNU) Crusaders, who have also had a slow start in their GNAC campaign.
At the Clan’s last match in California, both Miguel Hof and Pascal Schmidt were given red cards and consequently were unavailable to participate in Thursday’s contest. Replacing Schmidt at centre-back was junior Brendan Shaw, who usually plays as a midfielder, and replacing Hof in goal was redshirt-freshman Aidan Bain.
After a fairly relaxed opening 20 minutes, SFU scored first off of a NNU turnover. Junior forward Mamadi Camara made a strong driving run and blasted a low strike across the goal into the far corner. A few minutes later, NNU found the equalizer. Bain attempted to punch the inswinging cross in a crowded area, unfortunately the punch fell to the feet of a NNU forward, who made no mistake.
Just a few minutes before halftime, Magnus Kristensen swung in a beautiful ball to the back post, where Adam Jones knocked it back across goal for Riley Pang to tap in. The match stayed fairly even for the remainder of the night, NNU only directing one attempt at goal which was stopped by the wall that was Bain.
“[I] thought Aidan was great! [I’m] very proud of him getting his first GNAC win,” said head coach Clint Schneider.
In the 89th minute, Camara would get his second of the night from a nice link up between Connor Glennon and Kyle Jones. “We have a bunch of star players, but I’m happy for Mamadi. We need him to get going and start scoring goals and hopefully tonight was the start of that,” said Schneider when asked about Camara’s performance.
Schneider also had this to say when asked how it feels to be back at home: “[It’s] always easier to play at home . . . in your comfort zone, your own bed, [and] your own routine . . . I’m very proud of our guys.”
Captain Adam Jones returned to the lineup on Thursday after missing the last few matches with a lower-body injury. In the last quarter of Thursday’s contest, Jones was subbed out, but this was for precautionary reasons, said Schneider.
Another positive for SFU was their shots-to-goals ratio. In their loss against Concordia on September 28, the Clan managed 17 shots in the second half, with only one goal to show for it. Thursday was a different story, SFU putting six shots towards the NNU goal, three of them on target, and those three all ending up in the back of the net.
The Clan look to continue their clinical attack on Saturday as the team hosts Montana State University Billings at 7 p.m. on Terry Fox Field.
