The Bowling Green Men’s Soccer team showed some signs of improvement on Saturday, as they kicked off their 2005 season in an exhibition match against the Oakland Golden Grizzlies.

Three first-half goals sealed the game for Oakland, as they were able to keep the Falcons off their backs for the remainder of the game.

But the orange and brown didn’t make it easy.

Despite the early 3-0 deficit, BGSU was able to stay even with their quick and savvy opponents from Oakland, Mich.

Even the young first-half starters had a few strong attacks.

Head Coach Fred Thompson decided to start the young guys in this one, putting out five freshmen to kick things off.

‘We wanted to give those guys their first impressions of the college game, and they were shaky at first but came out their second times and picked up the pace,’ said Thompson, following the game.

Thompson was especially pleased with the play of his young goal-keepers, despite the few unfortunate scores that snuck by them.

The first Oakland goal just cleared the stretching hands of a diving Sholtz. The two other goals came at 26 and 11 minutes remaining in the first half.

The Golden Grizzlies dominated the entire first half until their third goal, however BGSU began to step it up nearing the end of the half, giving them a dose of momentum heading to the break.

The Falcons’ momentum carried into the second half, as the starters returned to the field, which seemed to get the team off on the right foot.

However, they were unable to break the Oakland’s tough line of defensemen.

This lasted until the remaining 15 minutes of the match, when the University came out firing, ripping 4 close shots on goal, but they were unable to put one in.

BG’s George Davis nearly had two of them within the final five minutes of the game.

‘George wasn’t too happy about missing those,’ Thompson said.’He had some great shots and it was really unfortunate they didn’t end up on the score board.’

The Falcons put up six shots on goal for the day, opposed to Oakland’s nine.

Sophomore goalkeeper Brent Petkus played the second half and had a tremendous save on a close, wide-open shot, with three minutes to go.

This kept the Golden Grizzlies lead from bumping up to 4.

The game concluded shortly after Petkus’s save, with a final score of 3-0.

But Head Coach Thompson liked the overall effort by his team.

‘I’m happy about this game because we came out and played well against a tough team,’ Thompson said. ‘Let’s just hope we can keep it up and keep getting better and more in tune with each other, then we’ll win some games.’