Eagles fall to Cougars in tough section battle
NEW ULM — After a draining 1-0 home loss to Marshall in the Big South Conference title game Tuesday, the New Ulm Eagles didn’t have it any easier Thursday when they hosted the Mankato East Cougars.
The Cougars jumped on the Eagles early and held off a late challenge to take down the Eagles 4-2 in a Section 2AA boys soccer game at New Ulm High School.
New Ulm fell to 11-4-1 on the year in defeat, while East improved to 10-3-2.
While New Ulm head coach Tim Plocher talked about responding to mistakes after Tuesday’s loss to Marshall, the Eagles didn’t look like a team making many mistakes Thursday. They were, however, tired and wounded.
“We’re really fighting injuries, just naturally,” Plocher said. “Jens [Quist] has a hurt foot from the last game, actually, and some other guys like Josh [Shaneman] has a hip flexor injury. … Especially when we play three tough games back to back to back, we get winded and we have one practice in between all three games, it can be pretty difficult.”
Quist ended up stopping 11 shots in net for the Eagles.
New Ulm, who was outshot 15-6 in shots on goal, had just one shot on goal in the first half, a slow dribbler off the foot of Logan Goblirsch that was easily covered up just before the halftime horn.
The Cougars were on the board first in the 14th minute on a goal from Salman Ali and went ahead 2-0 in the 26th minute on a penalty kick from Jhoel Dillon, who finished the game with a hat trick.
In addition to New Ulm’s fatigue, Plocher said he also had some players dealing with the challenge of playing against familiar faces.
“Some of the issues we come with, especially against this team, a lot of the guys who play summer ball are on the same team as them and they get in each other’s heads,” he said. “And I have a couple of players that have to beat that part of the game as well.”
It didn’t take East too long to go up 3-0 in the second half as a pass from Ali to Dillon was put in the back of the net. Quist originally stopped the shot with his legs, but the ball managed to trickle its way past Quist after all.
New Ulm finally broke through on a chip shot in traffic by Micah Scotting in the 58th minute to make it 3-1.
“Micah Scotting had an awesome goal … right over everyone, it was perfect,” Plocher said. “I appreciate him especially because he typically doesn’t just pound it over the net and sometimes we struggle with that, so props to Micah for that. And then Nico and Jackson had a really good combo for another goal there.”
That other goal for New Ulm, a through pass from Jackson Ocampo to Nico Del Castillo Diez in the 75th minute, didn’t come before East was able to take a 4-1 lead on a strong shot by Dillon to give him the hat trick in the 64th minute. That third goal by Dillon was assisted on by Idris Daees.
New Ulm now awaits playoff seeding for the Section 2AA tournament, which begins Tuesday. Seeding will be decided Sunday.