Syracuse, N.Y. – The Le Moyne College men's soccer concluded the regular season on Thursday with a 1-1 draw against Sacred Heart University at Ted Grant Field.
The Dolphins celebrated Senior Day on Thursday and held a ceremony to recognize two seniors (
David Bosak and
Noah Sperduto) and five graduate students (
Benedict Klimmek,
Luca Nicastro,
Alessandro Otte,
Ben Quigley and
Brett Stern) prior to kickoff.
Both teams entered the match having already clinched a berth in the NEC Tournament.
The SHU Pioneers took a 1-0 lead in the 12
th minute when David Garcia Gallego dribbled into the right side of the Le Moyne penalty area and hit a left-footed shot that deflected off the head of a Le Moyne defender and found the right side of the net. The goal was Garcia Gallego's fourth of the season.
The Dolphins evened the score in the 32
nd minute when redshirt-junior defender
Jack Goodrich (Kelsall, England/King's School Chester) drove the ball on the ground into the SHU 18-yard box where redshirt-sophomore midfielder
Ziad Abdul-Malak (Manlius, N.Y./Fayetteville-Manlius) expertly redirected the high-speed pass into the bottom left corner of the net.
The goal was Abdul-Malak's fourth of the season, and third in conference play, while Goodrich tallied his team-leading sixth assist of the campaign on the play.
The play marked the third time this season that Goodrich assisted on an Abdul-Malak goal.
Abdul-Malak and Goodrich are now tied for the team lead in goals with four each. Abdul-Malak's three goals against NEC competition is the most on the team.
"I thought we had a good first half performance after going a goal down," said Le Moyne head coach
Callum Donnelly '17, M '21 after the match. "The second half we tried to go after the second [goal], but I just thought we lacked that bit of composure needed to break them down. We tried to change it by going two up front towards the end, but it didn't have the desired effect.
"I'm proud of the group for making postseason. We've worked ever so hard to play in these important matches come the end of the season. I'm enjoying parts of our game a lot, but we still have areas we must improve upon. We have to recover and rest up. We have now faced all of the teams, so we know what we need to do to go further in the tournament. We are excited and cannot wait for postseason," Donnelly added.
The Dolphins outshot the Pioneers by a tally of 11-9 during the 90 minutes.
Goodrich, Sperduto, Abdul-Malak, freshman forward
Felix Ludemann and Klimmek each recorded a shot on goal for the Dolphins.
Le Moyne freshman goalkeeper
Wyatt Dupell tallied three saves during the match, while SHU graduate goalkeeper Andrew Hammersley came up with four saves for the Pios.
Following the result, the Pioneers finished fourth in the NEC Standings and will host a home match in the first round of the conference tournament on Sunday.
The Dolphins, in their first season as Division I members of the Northeast Conference, claimed the sixth seed in the NEC Tournament, and will travel to take on the no. 3 seed on Sunday.
Dating back to its time in the Northeast-10 Conference, the Le Moyne men's soccer program has qualified for its conference postseason tournament in each of the past 22 seasons.
