If you thought you heard lightning last night, then you’ll be happy to hear that was instead a clash between UVU and the Omaha Mavericks Men’s Soccer teams.
Ending in a tie 1-1, that pace would remain for almost the entire game. Omaha brought the pressure while UVU matched their offensive efforts with their defense.
Senior goalkeeper Kolby Sessions would end the night with three saves to the Mavericks four shots on goal.
At the end of the first half, it seemed that this would end in a draw; a 0-0 deadlock scenario, until the 58th minute, when everything came crashing down.
After a nasty foul from UVU senior Toke Amtrup, Omaha got a successful penalty kick bringing the score 1-0.
If you thought the Wolverine’s would let that get to their heads, then you were dead wrong. “We didn’t stress. We didn’t fret about it,” said head coach Michael Chessler. “We just knew that we had the right game plan and took care of it”
And took care of it they did. The next ten minutes consisted of the UVU offense and defense upping the ante. Passes to each other were near perfect and Omaha defense was broken through.
Inside the goalie box: a volley of passes, crosses and blocks. Wolverine senior Mason Abdella took a shot, it hits the crossbar, flies straight up into the air. The players, strikers and defense alike, all looking to get the angle. But senior Jose Luis Martin Montealegre saw it, and headed the ball straight into the net at the 67th minute no less.
UVU was fired up, maybe too fired up. After kick off, less than 30 seconds after their goal, senior Nil Grau charged straight into a Maverick striker and received a red card.
Down to 10 players with 24 minutes left, UVU will need to work harder. Their offense, oddly enough became a highlight of the last chunk. The ball almost entirely was kept on the Maverick’s end.
“It’s funny when teams go down, it seems like all of a sudden there’s this turn-up in volume and in energy and everyone knows they gotta do two or three jobs instead of just theirs and it naturally helps us sometimes.” said coach Chessler.
This turn-up was successful as UVU kept the score to a tie and continues their lossless streak of 3-0-1.
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