The BG men’s soccer team’s trip to Washington, D.C., this weekend didn’t go quite as planned as they suffered losses to George Mason and American University, dropping their record to 1-2-1.

On Friday, the team fell to George Mason by a score of 3-1 in a game where temperatures rose around 95 degrees. Matt Klancic scored the Falcons’ only goal of the contest.

Despite the loss, Head Coach Fred Thompson was not completely discouraged.

“I thought we were the more dangerous of the two teams,” Thompson said. “But it was just unfortunate that we had a couple mistakes that cost us goals in the first half.”

On Sunday, the Falcons suffered a heartbreaking 2-1 loss to American University after a BGSU defensive error late in the game sent the ball sailing into the wrong net. Junior midfielder Gavin Dozier scored BG’s only goal of the game.

Throughout the contest, the Falcons were able to control the game and limit the number of American scoring opportunities, but it was AU’s ability to capitalize on key BGSU mistakes that earned them the win.

“They really only had one opportunity, and they scored two goals,” Thompson said. “[They were] both at the end of the half, and both at times when you really should be focusing extremely hard, but it’s difficult for younger teams to concentrate for the full time.

“American, defensively, at least, made less defensive mistakes than we did, and that’s all it really came down to,” he said.

The Falcons will open their home schedule this weekend in the BGSU invitational with games against Central Arkansas on Friday (2:30 p.m.), and Canisius on Sunday (1 p.m.).

Freshman defenseman and Team Captain Thomas McLean says that the team is looking to work hard in practice this week in order to prevent another negative outcome, and that they are looking forward to finally playing at home.

“We just plan on training hard this week, and putting in all the effort this week, and hopefully just putting the losses behind us,” McLean said. “Hopefully we can come out with two wins at the end of the week.

“It should be good because hopefully we get some fans into the stadium for our games, they support us, and they can push us to two wins this weekend to get our record up to 3-2-1.”