The Fort Lewis College men’s soccer team’s surprising season ended Friday in overtime.
FLC reached the semifinal round of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference men’s soccer tournament. In most years, that would be expected of the Skyhawks. But, going into 2017, the Skyhawks added 17 new players and saw 15 leave the program for various reasons. Despite all the turnover, third-seed FLC was alive Friday night in Golden against the second-seeded Colorado Mesa Mavericks, the No. 10 NCAA Division II team in the country.
Though they played a man down the majority of the match, the Mavericks kept the Skyhawks off the board and pushed the game into overtime. Three minutes in to extra time, Malik Mennana scored for Colorado Mesa to send the Mavericks into the RMAC championship game at 1 p.m. Sunday against Colorado Mines. It was Mannana’s ninth goal of the season.
“Obviously we’re disappointed in the result tonight,” FLC second-year head coach David Oberholtzer said. “I wish we would’ve gotten a little more dangerous and created a few more opportunities. We were missing an edge tonight. Mesa is a good team, and this is two games in a row we’ve hung right in there with them.”
FLC was outshot 15-9 Friday night, but the Skyhawks put three shots on goal to only two by the Mavericks. FLC didn’t get a shot in overtime, while the Mavericks fired two.
The game was changed in the 28th minute, as Colton Ladyga of Colorado Mesa earned his second card in a span of 13 minutes. Shown a red card, Ladyga was ejected and the Mavericks had to play with 10 men.
FLC mostly controlled possession with man-up advantage, but several second-half shots went wide or over the cross bar, as Colorado Mesa’ stingy defense was there to contest every opportunity, especially on all three FLC corner kick chances.
“Any time a team goes down a man, mentally it’s a bit of a challenge to make sure you keep your foot on the pedal and keep pushing the tempo,” Oberholtzer said. “You kind of expect them to go down and sit in a bit defensively, and I felt like that’s what they did. It was difficult for us to get dangerous in the final third.”
Peter Byrne was credited with one save in the match for FLC and made several good plays in dangerous situations. Briley Guarneri made three saves for the Mavericks.
FLC will lose only three seniors in Sean Cleary, Salifu Jatta and Nathan Roberts going into next season and will return a strong group of players who have molded to the culture Oberholtzer wanted to establish at FLC.
“I am pleased with how everything went the last year and a half as a whole,” Oberholtzer said. “The new guys coming in, there was a cohesion between them and the veteran players. We have a lot of promise for the future, and I’m real excited about the group we got returning. We will prepare the next 10 months to be ready for next year.”
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
