The West Texas A&M men’s soccer team met its match when the Northeastern State Riverhawks came to Canyon. The Buffaloes defeated the Riverhawks, 2-1, but not without a fight.
The win improves the Buffalo record to 11-1-1 (1-0-1 LSC) and drops the Riverhawks to 6-5 (0-2 LSC). The game between the two rivals didn’t seem to be WT’s best having more cautions from the officials than goals.
“We’ve had a break for 12 days, so we knew it was going to be hard,” sophomore defender Nicki Nielsen said. “They are a hard team to play, but we didn’t play well today. It wasn’t a good performance. We should have done a lot better.”
WT managed to get 18 shots and five shots on goal while Northeastern took nine shots and six shots on goal.
Within the fourth minute of play, Northeastern fouled inside the goalkeeper box giving the Buffaloes their first goal off of a penalty kick shot in by Nielsen.
“I have a decent kick,” Nielsen said. “Plus, I can hit it hard, so that’s a good combination for a penalty kick. There is always pressure when it’s a penalty kick because it’s a big chance, and you’re going to have to score on it.”
Sophomore midfielder Dominic Furness scored the second goal of the match when he faced Riverhawk goalkeeper Matthew Murrell one-on-one assisted by junior forward Ben Everson in the 19th minute.
Over the next 50 minutes of play, officials handed out yellow cards to NSU’s Justin Cleland and Dre Hill and WTAMU’s Dominic Furness.
Riverhawk Andre Hernandez bounced a shot in off of the post in the 69th minute making the score 2-1.
The crowd turned on the officials when Furness received his second yellow card of the game in the 82nd minute causing his ejection from the game.
“I didn’t think the first yellow card was a yellow card and the second one I didn’t think was one as well,” Furness said. “I didn’t think I deserved that at all.”
The Buffalo bench was given a yellow card shortly after for conduct.
“It looked like the guys were really tired,” Butch Lauffer head coach said. “The break gets them out of their sink a little bit and out of their routine, but hopefully we can get back into a normal routine and get the enthusiasm up for next weekend.”
The Buffaloes host two games this weekend starting on Oct. 23 when they meet Incarnate Word at 1 p.m. followed by Midwestern State on Oct. 25 at 3 p.m.