On Tuesday September 10th, the DePauw men's soccer team hosted the Rose Hulman Fightin’ Engineers in a closely played match. DePauw entered this match with a record of 2-0-1, with wins over Berea and Franklin and a draw with North Park. Rose Hulman came into Tuesday with a record of 0-1-2, with a loss against Wabash and draws against Wilmington and Principia.
DePauw started off the game strong and seemed to have pretty good control of the pace, dominating the first half. DePauw spent much of the first half in Rose Hulman’s end of the field getting off 4 shots, including one on goal and creating 6 corners. However, the Tigers were not able to find the back of the net. Rose Hulman was only able to get one shot off that was not on goal and one corner kick in the first half, spending little time in the DePauw half of the field. After a not- so- eventful first 45 minutes, the score was still tied 0-0. The second half started off pretty similarly to the first half, with DePauw seeming to continue to have more of the ball than Rose Hulman. In the 63rd minute, the deadlock was broken as Rose Hulman’s forward Tyler Eldridge ‘24 scored his second goal of the season off of a corner kick assisted by graduate student midfielder Julius Salinas to make the score 1-0 in favor of the Fightin’ Engineers.
With DePauw needing a goal, they went back on the offensive and once again seemed to dominate possession of the ball and created multiple chances to score. The Tigers had 8 shots in the second half, and two of them forced Rose Hulman senior goalkeeper John Biederstedt to make his second and third saves of the match. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, DePauw was not able to find a goal in this match and Tyler Eldridge’s goal in the 63rd minute on Rose Hulman’s only shot on goal ended up being the deciding goal of the match. The Tigers came up short in this match losing 1-0 despite outshooting the Fightin’ Engineers 12 to 5 in total shots and 3 to 1 in shots on target.
Reflecting on the game, forward Joey Vehovsky ‘27 said, “Sometimes games go like that, we outshot them 12-4 and we doubled their corner kicks. We were definitely in their half more than they were in ours. It was also a pretty fluid game. We used a lot of subs, which allowed us to keep the pressure on them. The fresh legs definitely helped our performance. Sometimes the goals don’t come, and that happened against Rose Hulman. Fortunately, we have another chance to redeem ourselves on Friday against Hanover, so I’d say the team is pretty excited.”
The Tigers played again Friday night at home against Hanover, emerging with an impressive 2-0 victory. Following the win their record now sits at 3-1-1. Before the game Joey told me, “ The team is starting to build some good chemistry, so Friday will be a good test to see if we can keep working together.” The Tigers played a very impressive game and, as Joey said, it seems like the team is really starting to come together.