Mens soccer falls short of playoff berth

The Slippery Rock men's soccer team's season came to an unfortunate end. A win versus Lock Haven University, who had already clinched a position in the PSAC playoffs, would have kept their playoff dreams alive.

On top of a win, the Rock needed several other events to occur, sophomore midfielder Frank Maiolo said.

    "There were four events that needed to fall into play for us in order to advance to playoffs," Maiolo said. "We needed Gannon to beat Mercyhurst, Cal to beat Shippensburg, East Stroudsburg and Bloomsburg to tie, and then we needed to win in goal differential between a few other teams."

    Lock Haven immediately stole the momentum of the game when they scored just 1:28 into the game. The Rock was unable to match the goal during the first half and also allowed the Bald Eagles to score a second goal during the 31st minute.

    Junior goalkeeper Timothy White said that the Rock didn't come out with enough effort on defense to start the game and let Lock Haven attack too quickly.

"In the first half, we just didn't put enough pressure on their defense and they had too much time on the ball in the midfield," White said. "It allowed them to attack us relatively easy. We just came out too flat in the first half."

    With one final half to go that would determine the fate of their season, the Green and White came out ready to go. Freshman forward Stephen Donnelly scored a penalty kick in the 71st minute to cut down Lock Haven's lead.

    Slippery Rock was unable to capture the momentum of the game and Lock Haven scored during a breakaway goal in the 85th minute of the game to secure the win. The win by the Bald Eagles improved them to the first seed for the PSAC playoffs.

    Senior defender Patrick Conley played in his final game of his career and reflected on his time at SRU.

    "The thing I will miss most about not only this season, but my entire career here, is just being with the team, whether it's in the locker room, at practice, on away trips or actually playing in the games," Conley said. "It's amazing how close a group of guys can become in such a short period of time."