DePauw men's soccer lets in late goal in loss to North Park

It was a hard-fought game; in the end, a dramatic lone goal by Teo Helm, assisted by William de Carro, gave the win to the Vikings of North Park (8-3-1) against the Tigers (4-5-2) on a cold Saturday afternoon.

The Tigers entered Saturday’s contest with mixed results, winning only one of their last five games and four out of 10 games this season. The Tigers came into the match-up after two difficult conference games: an unfortunate showing at home against Kenyon, which ended in a 3-1 loss, followed by an entertaining and hard-fought 3-3 draw away from home against Wabash. The Tigers looked for a win to build confidence and find a rhythm for the remaining games in the season and conference play.

Apart from the Tigers, North Park entered the game in good form, with only one loss in its last five games. They also came into the game with back-to-back wins against Millikin and Elmhurst with socres of 1-0 and 5-1 respectively.

Tigers struggled in the first half.

This game was a tight one for the Tigers and North Park throughout the majority of the first half.

The Tigers and Vikings had multiple shots, with the Tigers providing three shots and North having seven, but the Tigers had two shots on target. However, the composed defense from both sides kept the game at 0-0.

Coach Steven McCarthy spoke about how, although no goals were scored, he was happy with how composed and tough the defense was in not letting any goals in, but he wasn’t concerned with the lack of goals in the first half.

“It really wasn’t a crazy concern in the first half. We had scored in our last couple of games; we scored three on Wednesday, so scoring wasn’t too big of a concern. It was more kind of defending, and we really thought it was going to come down to one goal.”

The second half was fought hard and brought the only goal.

This second half was also a tight one for the Tigers and North Park as, for the majority of the second half, neither team could find the net.

North Park had seven shots while the Tigers had four as the second half provided the attacking prowess and a goal that the fans and people wanted the whole game.

However, the goal didn’t come from the Tigers but from the Vikings in the 85th minute from Teo Helm, assisted by William de Carro.

Coach McCarthy spoke to the obvious horrible feeling of a defeat, but how the team will bounce back for their next fixture on Tuesday.

“Obviously, any time you play well and then concede late, it doesn’t feel good. It definitely doesn’t feel good, so you try and focus on the positives you had in the game. You try and focus on the good moments that you had building into next Tuesday with a home conference game … this stings a bit; you’d like to get a good result going back into conference play. We still know there’s still everything to play for,” said Coach McCarthy.

The goalkeeper of the game, junior Alexander Lundin, also spoke about what went down with the goal and how he conceded it, then how he and his team will bounce back for the next game.

“Heartbreaking goal, they played that goal really well. Their run into the box from their striker was excellent and I kind of came out trying to make myself big, but it was a really good shot by him. I wouldn’t say we switched off at all or deviated from our defensive play; it was just that they played through really well and executed well, so it was just for us that we couldn’t execute like they did. So, that was really the only thing separating us in that game was those finishing moments. They took theirs and we unfortunately couldn’t take ours,” said Lundin.