Men's Soccer Closes out the Season with a 2-0 Win over Mitchell
Dean College closed out its season with a 2-0 win over Mitchell College on Tuesday in New London, Connecticut, playing the final 37 minutes a man down.
Dean struck first against a Mariners side that controlled much of the opening half. Nate Beturne checked in during the twenty-seventh minute and scored four minutes later, an unassisted goal in the thirty-first minute, his third of the season, to put the Bulldogs up 1-0. Noah Amaral kept the lead intact, turning away Sean Khan in the fifteenth minute, Jeremiah Heins in the seventeenth, and Khan again in the forty-third, as Mitchell went into the break with six shots and nothing to show for them.
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The second half brought the drama. Maxi Del Castillo picked up a yellow card in the fifty-first minute, Mitchell’s Diego Chavez was booked in the fifty-third, and ten seconds later Del Castillo was shown a red card, leaving Dean with ten men for the rest of the way. Mitchell’s Noah Dias was cautioned in the sixty-second minute, which also led to the officials warning both team benches. The game had started to build drama in the second half.
Then, in the sixty-third minute, seconds after a Dean corner kick, freshman Jacob Wilks scored his first goal of the season, a rocket of a volley into the bottom right corner that found the back of the net, with Drew Folley and Ciaran Phibbs getting the assists. Wilks ran to the corner flag and kicked it in the style of Premier League striker Jean-Philippe Mateta, and the reaction from his teammates was electric.
Mitchell kept pushing, but Amaral would not break. The Mariners finished with 16 shots to Dean’s three and nine corners to one, yet Amaral made six saves, including two on Chavez just fifteen seconds apart in the sixty-seventh and sixty-eighth minutes. Dean needed only two shots on target, and both went in, while Mitchell goalkeeper Jesse Jenkins finished without a save. Ethan Zigler and Kohnor Ennis also picked up yellow cards late.
Amaral, Folley, Phibbs, Zigler and Cairo Gordon-Somers-Archer played all 90 minutes, along with Austin Clark in the midfield.
Calrk said, “It's good for momentum, ending on a high note is good, even though there were some hard times this season. We bounced back in the last couple of games. Hopefully we can learn from the season and look to a better one next year.”
The win capped the season for the Bulldogs, who finished 2-10-5.
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