Men and Women v Wisconsin Lutheran

The women played a great game against a tough conference opponent last weekend. WLC is usually one of our biggest conference rivals going back to the days of Rebekah Himm and Kari Seijkowski (also known as "Psycho") for WLC and Sommer Rodolph and Jen Adam for MBBC. In 2003, we defeated them in regular season play and they spoiled our home playoff game. Every year since then just about every match has been decided by 1 goal:
MBBC 1 WLC 0
WLC 4 MBBC 1
WLC 2 MBBC 1
MBBC 1 WLC 1 2OT
WLC 1 MBBC 0 (MBBC outshot WLC 20 to 7)
MBBC 1 WLC 0

This year was no different as both teams played a tough, phyisical game. For the second year in a row, we held the advantage in possession, but struggled to find the net until Melissa Nichols picked up a ball near midfield, dribbled through about 3 people and just about "willed" the ball into the net. We had strong play out of our midfield, especially Cara Harrisonn who slammed the door shut defensively and Barb Gerlach who earned her first conference shut-out. Our team is relatively healthy right now and we are starting to catch glimpses of the potential of the talent on our squad. We still have a lot of work to do, but we are ready for the challenge.

The men have similarly played a number of close matches with WLC in recent years. Last year's contest featured, physical play, a weather delay, 40+ stitches, lot's of shots by MBBC, but a 2-1 WLC victory. This year's contest showed signs of being another tight match as Maranatha hit the crossbar in the first half on free kick by Hollenbeck and a couple of guys going for the header. The score was 1-0 WLC at halftime and we seemed to be playing okay. WLC scored fairly quickly into the second half to make the score 2-0, but we put together an attack that saw Andrew Solarek hit the right post after a good pass from his brother, Timothy. Then in the 71st minute, everything started to unravel. You can check out the box score here.

We are very injured right now on the men's squad. Joel Smith is still trying to return from his broken arm this summer. Josh Marino had surgery on his elbow yesterday. Steven White, Jarid Lawson, Levi Deiss are all unavailabel due to various tears and pulls. There are also several players playing through their various injuries. Hopefully they do not get worse. -C