Late goal is deciding factor
Kyle McDonald | Sports Editor | @kylesportsbias
Photo credit: Gabi Campbell | Art Director | @gabicampbellphotos
OREM, Utah — The Utah Valley Men’s Soccer team held their second annual inter-squad game at Clyde Field on Saturday night with the green team prevailing 2-1 over the gray team.
“This was an important match for our team,” UVU head coach Greg Maas said. “We’ve got a lot of depth and it showed tonight. We had qualities on both sides of the ball and we had some great finishes and at times we defended very well.”
Freshman forward Donnet Sackie got the green team on the board late in the first half as he ripped a shot from the penalty area into the back of the net past the arms of goalkeeper Collin Partee to make it 1-0.
Four minute into the second half, the gray team got on the scoreboard and evened things up thanks to a goal by sophomore midfielder Lucas Cawley.
The game was tied 1-1 throughout most of the second half as both teams played solid defense and both goalkeepers made tremendous saves.
“There were times in the match where there were good, hard, honest tackles,” Maas said. “As the game wound down and the green team went up a goal, coaches made an adjustment with the gray team to put more numbers up top and there was a 100 percent effort by the gray team to get a goal back and they just came up a little short. Credit to the green team as it was a fantastic win for them.”
With 9:37 remaining in the game, the green team broke through. Sophomore forward Austin Buxton rebounded his own shot that had bounced off of Partee and put in in the back of the net for the game-winning goal.
UVU begins their regular season on Friday August 28 as they travel to Massachusetts to take on UMass in a rematch of their first game as an NCAA Division I soccer program. They will follow that up with a match against UMass Lowell two days later. Their first home game is scheduled for September 11 when they play Bradley at 7 p.m. MT.
