Scranton Lions Wrap up the 2023 Soccer Season

By: Ross Turetsky, Penn State Scranton Athletics

On Saturday afternoon on the pitch, the visiting Penn State Scranton Lions men's soccer squad finished off their 2023 regular season campaign with a 4-0 shutout loss to conference foe Penn State New Kensington. With the defeat, Scranton's first-year head coach Robert Denney wrapped up the season on a mini three game losing streak and led the team to an overall record of 1-10-2 and they were 1-5-2 in the all-important league play schedule.

The hometown New Kensington ball club scored a pair of goals in the first half of play and tallied two more insurance scores in the second half to capture their dominant four goal victory. New Kensington kicked-off their scoring spree just 11:50 into the contest, when Devin Murray, assisted by Michael Chaloupka, found the back of the net to give their team an early 1-0 advantage over Scranton. Then about 28-minutes later, at the 39:19 mark, Shane Stefanik, assisted by Ethan Wineberg, stretched Kensington's lead to 2-0, a sizeable lead they would enjoy heading into the half-time break in the action. In the second half, Devin Murray would score his second tally of the match, this one unassisted, to give his squad a 3-0 advantage at 63:26. Then last but certainly not least, Seth Trisoline, unassisted, made it 4-0 at the 74:01 mark, for the final goal of the day that clinched Kensington's shutout win when the game's final buzzer sounded. 

On the goaltending side of things, Scranton's stand-out freshman goalkeeper Ethan Lovelace was stalwart between the pipes once again, as he stopped a whopping 16 out of the 20 shots on goal he faced while playing the entire 90-minutes of the matinee. Meanwhile, New Kensington had Kenton Knox earn the victory in net during his impressive 82:18 of action in goal by stopping Scranton's lone shot on goal in the ball game, stellar freshman Owen Sheils accounted for the scoring chance, before back-up goalie Ericson Kimbel II finished up the busy day's festivities for the contest's final 7:42 of play.