Photo by Liisa Halloran
Los Angeles, CA — Occidental's men's soccer team had their Homecoming and Senior Day matchup with the Whittier College Poets on Saturday.
#5 Marcus Chmielewski, #10 Joey Schwartz, #15 Sebastian Romero, #19 Lukas Howlett and #21 Evan Karp were honored with a pregame ceremony to commemorate their hard work and dedication to both Oxy's men's soccer team as well as the Occidental community.
Once the game got started, Aiden Aley and the Tigers came out firing. Aley had two shots right out of the gate one of which needed to be saved by the Whittier goalie. Oury Diane and senior Evan Karp quickly followed with two more shots on goal that were also saved.
After Riley Nyhan picked up a save of his own, Oxy broke through and scored in the 22nd minute as Oury Diane scored a great goal and added to his impressive total for the season. Oxy had 5 more shots in the half, two coming from Sebastian Langer Chan and two from Sebastian Romero but Whittier made a team save and a goalie save to prevent two more goals for Oxy and the score would be 1-0 entering halftime.
Early in the 2nd half, Whittier was able to break through and tie the game at 1. Oxy quickly worked to get a look at three shots after Whitter scored but two of them were blocked. In the 57th minute, however, Max Stanley set up senior Marcus Chmielewski with a nice pass and Chmielewski capitalized on it to put it into the back of the net and give the Tigers the lead back at 2-1.
Oxy continued to put pressure on the Poets and forced their goalie to make many more saves before the game would end. The Tiger defense really picked up once they regained the lead and they allowed only one more shot attempt for Whittier in the game and it was wide right.
Oxy would secure the 2-1 win on Senior Day and improve to 6-1-3 in SCIAC play and sit in 2nd place only 2 points behind Redlands. The Tigers will have a huge game against the Bulldogs on Wednesday, October 25th at 7pm at Patterson Field so be sure to come out to support Oxy as they will have a chance to move into 1st place in the SCIAC with a win.
