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Eagles stifled by Scarlets

By Travis Rosenau 4 min read

NEW ULM -- The New Ulm Eagles have done a lot of things well early on this season, but good teams have paid attention to that.

The Mankato West Scarlets had the Eagles' number on Monday night, shutting them down in the second half to run away with a 6-1 win in a nonconference boys soccer game.

After tying things up late last Thursday at home against Tri-City United, the Eagles (6-2) allowed two goals in the final 10 minutes to lose 5-3 for their first loss of the season. The Eagles had a chance to get back on track Monday, but the Scarlets (2-4) shut things down on defense and were highly efficient on offense to hand the Eagles their second loss in a row.

The loss snapped a four-game skid by the Scarlets.

Mankato West outshot New Ulm just 8-7 in the game, but it made the most of its shots and relied on its defense to stifle New Ulm's attack.

Eagles head coach Tim Plocher said he wasn't surprised by how Mankato West played, but he thought Monday's result went deeper than just playing a good team.

"Not surprising but also not necessarily just a Mankato West thing," Plocher said. "Any team with access to footage knows who's been scoring goals. When our team thinks that's the only way to score goals is we boot it up, we have to be careful. We should be playing as a team more than just depending on two people to score all the goals."

New Ulm's leading goal scorer Levi Johnson did add the only goal of the night for the Eagles, but he was often surrounded by defenders and forced into bad spots.

After New Ulm had he first two shots on goal of the game, Jakobe Tosch was able to break away and get a shot off at the net. Eagles goalie Brevvin Vandermause got a hand on the ball, but it bounced in for a West lead in the seventh minute.

A half minute later, Oliver Demars fired a 30-yard shot at the net from the right side that got past Vandermause for a 2-0 West lead.

Late in the half, Logan Goblirsch managed to boot a through ball to Johnson, who softly chipped a shot past a sliding Scarlets goalie Brodie Cox for a goal in the 26th minute.

Late in the half, West got that goal back from Masud Ali to take a 3-1 lead into the half.

In the 45th minute, Tosch scored his second goal of the night to put West up 4-1 and in the 60th minute, a goal from Noah Wersal made it a 5-1 game. The Eagles got their lone shot on goal with less than 17 minutes in the game when Methodious Amoah fired a shot off, but Cox caught the ball for a save and the Scarlets reset.

In the 77th minute, a long free kick bounced in front of the net and was headed in by Santiago Hernandez Rojas for a 6-1 score.

"Sometimes you have a bad day and that just seemed to be like today," Plocher said. "Today I was missing a couple guys and some people had to step up in roles they're not used to and I appreciate them for that. … Philip [Lendt] and Colten [Evers] were playing my midfield near defenders and they were helpful up there and I appreciate them for that.

"But we know what [the Scarlets] do and we watch what they do. Compared to the TCU game, I think we played better in that game, it was 3-3 until the last five or six minutes against TCU. Here it's just we couldn't really get anything going. I think we know what we have to fix, we know what we've got to do, and teams know what we do, so going forward, something's got to change."

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