The Bowling Green men’s soccer team went 2-0 to begin the season this past weekend with wins over Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and Western Illinois.
The first game against SIUE was a 3-1 win, with the Falcons taking control of the game midway through the first half.
The three goals scored came from Ryan James, Joe Sullivan and Hermann Trophy watch list nominee Pat Flynn.
Flynn looked to put his team ahead after James scored the opening goal and put a header past the SIUE goalie, but the goal was taken back on an offside call.
Flynn came back seconds later to score and put the Falcons up 2-0. He then assisted 17 seconds later to Sullivan who put the Falcons up by three. All the goals came in a span of just over four minutes.
“It’s a confidence booster when you see the ball go through the net. It was unfortunate on the call but seeing the ball go through, you prove to yourself that you can score there,” Flynn said. “We really got on top of them in that five minute stretch.”
While that span was an obvious standout for the game, head coach Eric Nichols thinks there is still things the unit can improve on.
“It was a great five minutes. We try to be pretty quick with our attack anyway and create chances fast,” head coach Eric Nichols said. “But we didn’t have enough of those moments. There were too many gaps outside of that five minutes that we’re definitely going to have to get better at.”
While it was the upperclassmen who scored the goals, it was red-shirt freshman Bismark Agyeman that answered unknown questions for the team.
Agyeman did not play in a single match last fall. The second year player assisted on two of the goals scored to teammates James and Flynn.
“We’ve been really excited about Bismark. That second assist was just brilliant” Nichols said. “Those are things that we’ve seen him do consistently and we know he can do it.”
In the last game of the weekend against Western Illinois, it was Flynn who took the attention of the crowd in the 4-1 win. Flynn got his first hat trick of the season in the game, including one goal from an unlikely angle.
Red-shirt junior Ryan Heuton had four saves in the contest, totaling five in two starts on the weekend.
“It was a good weekend. We came in and got two wins, that’s what we really wanted to do,” Heuton said. “I thought we played well in both games, there were times we could have been better, but we got the wins and we’re going to take it into Thursday.”
The Falcons will continue their action at home this Thursday against Drexel at 7 p.m.
