Central men’s soccer squad earns road victory

Central College

ROCK ISLAND, ILL. — Registering its second shutout in four days, the Central College men’s soccer team beat Augustana College (Ill.) in a 1-0 non-conference tilt Tuesday night.

After starting the season giving up three goals in consecutive games, the Dutch (2-0) held their opponents scoreless for the second consecutive game.

“I’m especially pleased to get our second consecutive clean sheet,” coach Garry Laidlaw said. “Defensively, I thought we had a complete performance.”

Laidlaw highlighted the effort of juniors Adelmo Marchiori IV (Carlinville, Ill.) and EJ Schroeder (North Liberty, Iowa City West HS) on defense. The duo have had limited game action prior to this season and are starting to play well together.

“They had another tremendous game in the back,” Laidlaw said. “They’re really starting to gel at center back together. EJ was timing his tackles and distributing well. Adelmo was winning a lot of important balls in the air for us.”

Josh Carpenter (junior, Chelsea, Ala.) continues to establish himself as the team’s No. 1 goalkeeper. He faced 11 shots and made five saves against the Vikings.

“The defenders played great in front of him, but what he had to deal with he dealt with really well,” Laidlaw said.

The lone goal of the game came off the foot of Bryce Leonard (sophomore, Williamsville, Ill.) who scored his second goal of the season in the 20th minute. He took advantage of an unprepared Augustana side to score the game-winner.

“He took a quick free kick before they were completely set up,” Laidlaw said. “He curled a nice shot into the lower corner.”

The Dutch have shown great improvement in the last week according to Laidlaw, but he believes the team has even more room to grow.

“We’re still young and making some young mistakes at times,” Laidlaw said.” I thought we certainly took another important step tonight.”

The Dutch return home to face Bethany Lutheran (Minn.) on Thursday at 5 p.m.