Penn State Scranton Men’s Soccer Falls in Season Opener 

By: Ross Turetsky, Penn State Scranton Athletics 

Dunmore, Pa.- On a warm Tuesday afternoon in the electric city, the Penn State Scranton Lions men's soccer team dropped their home season opener to Lehigh Carbon Community College by the score of 5-0. The road warriors from Lehigh Carbon tallied a goal in the first half and added four big insurance goals in the final 45-minutes to ensure their dominant five score triumph.  

Lehigh kicked-off the scoring in the first half of play at 32:59 when Kacper Pazur found the back of net assisted by Miguel Roa. In the second half, Roa tallied a goal of his own, this time assisted by Josh Zellner, to increase his squad's advantage to 2-0 at the 61:07 mark. Then Zellner scored unassisted at 75:22 to inflate his team's lead to 3-0. Pazur would score his second goal of the contest to make it 4-0, assisted by Zellner, at 77:27. Last but certainly not least, Jose Barrios scored unassisted late in regulation at the 85:46 mark to give his club the 5-0 advantage they would enjoy by game's end.  

Meanwhile, the hometown Lions accounted for three shots on goal on the day, as a trio of freshmen in Owen Sheils, Chris Voka, and Nick Pallman picked those up.  

In terms of the goal tending in the contest, Scranton's freshman goalie Ethan Lovelace was solid between the pipes as he turned away a whopping 20 out of 25 shots on goal while playing the entire 90-minutes of the ball game. While Lehigh Carbon's goalie Matthew Eckman went the distance as he picked up the shutout victory saving all three shots he faced in the showdown.  

Now new head coach Robert Denney and his 0-1 Penn State Scranton men's soccer squad will look to bounce back from this tough defeat and capture their first win of the young season when they next host conference foe Penn State Mont Alto this upcoming Saturday afternoon starting at 2pm.