Men’s soc­cer kicks off sea­son un­blem­ished

The Bethel Men’s soc­cer team con­tin­ued it’s dom­i­nat­ing play on Wednes­day night with a 3-2 win over Goshen Col­lege. The Pi­lots came out ag­gres­sive and grabbed a 2-0 lead go­ing into the half. The goals were scored by Sopho­more Ro­mulo No­brega in the 25th minute and Se­nior Tim Jenk­in­son added an­other seven min­utes later. What looked to be an­other dom­i­nant vic­tory for the Pi­lots quickly un­rav­eled. Goshen quickly scored two goals in the first ten min­utes of the sec­ond half to tie the game up at 2-2. The Pi­lots an­swered back in a hurry with a go ahead goal from Ju­nior Mar­tin Ruiz. The goal ended up be­ing the game win­ner as the Pi­lots de­fense put the clamps on the Goshen of­fense for the rest of the way. With the win the Pi­lots have now won nine straight games and are 1-0-0 in the Mid-Cen­tral Con­fer­ence.

The Pi­lots are off to a blaz­ing start this sea­son. Wednes­day night’s win im­proved the team’s over­all record to 9-0-1. They have two wins against top 20 ranked NAIA teams and are now ranked #12 in the NAIA them­selves af­ter be­gin­ning the year un­ranked. New head coach Thi­ago Pinto came in last spring to re­place Greg Gid­man, and has done a won­der­ful job so far. Af­ter be­ing one win away from go­ing to the NAIA Na­tional Tour­na­ment last sea­son, they seem to have Fresno (lo­ca­tion for NAIA Na­tion­als) on the mind. The Pi­lot of­fense is scor­ing a frenzy of goals this sea­son and their de­fense is play­ing just as well. The Pi­lots have scored 26 goals while only re­lin­quish­ing seven in their ten games this sea­son. Fresh­man keeper Cody Troyer has held all but one of its op­po­nents, Goshen Col­lege, to one goal or less with the help of the Pi­lot’s stel­lar de­fense. Ex­pec­ta­tions for the men’s soc­cer team are al­ways high and they are go­ing to keep on ris­ing with each and every win.

Ju­nior Zach Ganzberg is look­ing for­ward to the rest of the sea­son.

“We got a re­ally great group of guys this year and it feels good to win,” says Ganzberg. “I re­ally hope we can ad­vance all the way to NAIA Na­tion­als as we were just a step short last sea­son.”

Last year Bethel ended up win­ning the MCC Con­fer­ence and ad­vanc­ing to a play in game for NA­IA’s. They are re­ally look­ing to push for more this year. With a mix of fa­mil­iar and fresh faces, Coach Pinto seems to have found very strong line­ups that not only can com­pete with every sin­gle team they have played against but also find a way to win those close games thus far.

In one in­stance though, the win did­n’t come af­ter a full game. When the Pi­lots were play­ing Jud­son Uni­ver­sity in the Wa­ter­ford Es­tates Fall Clas­sic, the game came to an abrupt stop with 32:10 re­main­ing in the sec­ond half. The cen­ter of­fi­cial was no longer able to of­fi­ci­ate and the Jud­son Coach did not want to con­tinue the game with only two of­fi­cials. NCAA rules, which gov­ern NAIA soc­cer, al­low for games to con­tinue with only a two man of­fi­ci­at­ing crew. The rules also state that 70 min­utes have to be com­pleted for the game to be con­sid­ered of­fi­cial. The fi­nal score on the score­board when the game was called was Bethel lead­ing Jud­son by a score of 3-0. The game is cur­rently be­ing re­viewed by the NAIA for a fi­nal rul­ing on the out­come of the game.

En­ter­ing con­fer­ence play with an un­de­feated record and be­ing the de­fend­ing con­fer­ence cham­pi­ons puts a big tar­get on the Pi­lots. The Pi­lot’s next game is Wednes­day, Sep. 30 at Grace Col­lege. The next home game for the Pi­lots is Sat­ur­day Oct. 3 at 7 p.m. against con­fer­ence foe Spring Ar­bor Uni­ver­sity.