Men’s Soccer Gains First Win
by Ben Pred

The Oberlin men’s soccer team won their first game of the season last Saturday, beating Muskingum College at Oberlin by a score of 4-1. The victory came in the third game of the year for the Yeomen and followed two tough shutout losses to Mount Union College and Baldwin-Wallace College.
Oberlin had been outscored thus far in the season by eight goals: Union soundly stomped Oberlin with five goals, and Wallace hammered home three.
Despite the rough start to the season, morale was high as the Yeomen took the field. Ten minutes into the contest, however, it looked as though history was going to repeat itself when Muskingum sophomore Dan Scmidlin scored a breakaway goal. “We started off well, but we had our lone defensive mistake in the very beginning of the game,” Oberlin head coach Blake New said. “Our defensive rotation was off, and we just couldn’t concentrate the defense back fast enough.”
Some faces fell, and the crowd that had gathered to watch the game feared that they were going to see a repeat performance of the previous two weeks. One or two pessimistic nay-sayers even left the stands, grumbling about another loss.

They should have stayed. A few minutes after the breakaway, sophomore Phil Kreniske scored a goal for the Yeomen, assisted by a great pass from Will ‘Axelrod’ Singer, to tie the game at one apiece. Oberlin goalie Simon Spaid recovered quickly from the fast Muskingum goal to make three saves in the half. Oberlin headed to the lockerroom with the score even at one.
The second half was a marvel to behold as individual stellar performances were molded into a solid team effort that streamlined into a Yeomen to victory. Coach New referred to the game as “the antithesis to our [Baldwin-Wallace] game last week,” and nowhere was this more evident than in the second half.
A new goalie, junior Yoav Tal, was put in the net for the Yeomen and promptly made two saves and allowed no goals. First-year Max Hellerman also made a strong showing, hustling after the ball as though it were a roast beef sandwich and he’d been on a desert island for the last eight years. Most of all, junior co-captain Rich Braithwaite came up with a huge game and scored a hat trick for Oberlin, all three goals coming in the second half.
“We came back after tough losses, and had a great week of practice where everyone was focused. We spent the week working on a game plan Blake [Coach New] set forth for us, and…we were able to accomplish the goals we had set,” Braithwaite said, “We were the superior team tactically, playing smart for a full ninety minutes, as a team.”
This game was the first of the season in which the Yeomen out-shot their opponents (11 to six). They also beat the Muskies in corner kicks by two, revealing the sheer amount of pressure Oberlin was able to put on Muskingum for the whole game. The single most important advantage Oberlin possessed, however, according to Braithwaite was their “superior fitness level…we came out in the second half and completely ran the show.”
The team has many reasons to look forward to their next game and is looking to build off of this recent success. The men next take to the field at Heidelberg on Thursday at 4 pm.