Scranton Lions Fall to Lehigh Valley

By: Ross Turetsky, Penn State Scranton Athletics

Playing through the Saturday evening rain drops at Dunmore's Schautz Stadium, the Penn State Scranton men's soccer squad dropped a 4-0 home decision to conference rival Penn State Lehigh Valley. With the defeat, the Lions from Scranton see their overall record go to 1-6-1 and they are 1-2-1 in their all-important league play schedule with just five regular season matches remaining this season.

The road warriors from Lehigh Valley scored a pair of goals in the first half of play and then added two big insurance tallies in the game's final 45-minutes to clinch their dominant shutout victory over Scranton. Lehigh Valley got on the scoreboard first just 8:59 into the ball game, when Jerod Younes, assisted by David Brownell, lit the lamp to give his club the early 1-0 advantage. Then about 15-minutes later at the 23:48 mark, Younes scored his second goal of the contest, once again assisted by Brownell, to give Lehigh the 2-0 lead they would enjoy going into the half-time break in the action.

In the second half of play, Lehigh was led again by Younes who completed his stellar hat trick, scoring for a third and final time on the day, this one unassisted, to stretch his team's advantage to 3-0 at 65:12. For Lehigh's fourth and final goal of the match, Freddy Issa, assisted by Elizabeth Wagner, found the back of the net at 80:19 to give his squad the 4-0 lead they would hold onto when the game's final buzzer sounded.

Scranton on offense saw shots on goal come from the feet of their stand-out freshman Owen Sheils, who had a pair of them, and fellow freshman Angel Magana who recorded one to boot.

On the goaltending side of things, Scranton was led by their stalwart freshman net minder Ethan Lovelace who stopped a whopping 12 of the 16 shots on goal he faced while playing the entire 90-minutes between the pipes. Meanwhile, Lehigh Valley's goalkeeper Michael Meyers Jr. showed no fright this Halloween season, as he pitched a complete game shutout in goal stopping all four shots he faced while going the distance and playing the entire contest.

Now first-year head coach Robert Denney and his 1-6-1 Penn State Scranton men's soccer squad will look to bounce back with a win when they next go on the road to take on non-conference foe Williamson this Tuesday night under the lights, with kick-off slated for a 6:30pm start time.