MEADVILLE —
Only a few dozen fans braved the elements Saturday afternoon for Allegheny’s North Coast Athletic Conference men’s soccer showdown against Wittenberg at Frank B. Fuhrer Field.
But those fans in attendance, despite being rain-soaked and cold, were definitely loud.
“It’s just a game,” one fan said to a member of the Allegheny women’s soccer team after she yelled out following a missed goal by senior Tyler Danzey as time wound down in the first overtime period.
“It’s conference,” another player responded. “It’s conference.”
And in conference play there simply are no holds barred.
During Saturday’s NCAC season opener between Allegheny and Wittenberg, three yellow cards were issued and more than two dozen fouls were whistled.
The end result was a 2-2 tie. And three of the four goals were scored on penalty kicks.
“Being the conference opener, it’s a completely different animal with conference games,” Allegheny head coach Angelo Panzetta said. “Everybody is jockeying for position. And maybe teams that didn’t start that well, they know it’s a new season when conference comes around.
“A win is hard to come by in our league. It’s one of the strongest leagues — men and women. We’re right up as one of the top five conference’s in the country I feel. No one is going to hand you a game.”
The Gators were reminded of that against the Tigers.
Allegheny entered the contest with just one loss. That defeat came back on Sept. 15 to nationally-ranked Carnegie Mellon — a loss the Gators responded to with a 3-1 win over No. 21 Baldwin-Wallace.
But the Gators struggled a bit early against the Tigers. Allegheny had possession at its end of the field for most of the first half and fired off eight shots. Just one of those shots found the net, though. It came unassisted off a rebound by David DelGreco at 11:22 to give the Gators a 1-0 lead.
That’s when things got interesting.
Wittenberg tied it up in the 57th minute off a penalty kick and took the lead on another penalty kick in the 86th minute. Both goals were scored by Daniel Broidy. At the time, it appeared to players and fans that every call was going against the Gators. The key was how they would react.
“After that second penalty kick we sort of realized we had to turn it on,” Allegheny junior midfielder Drew Miller said. “We didn’t want to drop the game at home against a team that we probably should have put away towards the beginning of the game. That was a wakeup call when they got the second penalty kick.”
Fortunately for the Gators a call went their way at 89:29, setting up a penalty kick by DelGreco, who cleared the goalie to tie the game at 2-2. Allegheny had several opportunities in the two overtime periods to score, but came up short.
“It was a little discouraging to hear the whistle blown against us so many times,” Miller said. “But you really can’t get too upset about it. You just have to keep going when that kind of thing comes against you. I’m happy we were able to get back in the game and get a point out of this.”
As was Panzetta.
“As I sit back on it now, we had plenty of chances in that first half where we came out very well and scored that goal and had multiple quality chances,” he said. “I look back at that now and we should have been up maybe two or three goals going into halftime. But Wittenberg got their feet under them and we were in a dogfight.”
The Gators moved to 6-1-1 overall and 0-0-1 in the NCAC. Wittenberg is now 4-3-2 overall and 0-0-1 in the conference.
John Lichina made eight saves in goal for Allegheny. Jeff Mengerink had six saves for Wittenberg.
Double the fun
The Allegheny women also opened the NCAC season at home Saturday. And it, too, wound up being in a dogfight.
Wittenberg defender Kelly Brothers scored on a header in the final minute as the Tigers beat Allegheny, 1-0, at Frank B. Fuhrer Field.
The loss was the Lady Gators’ fourth straight. Allegheny hadn’t lost four straight since 1998.
Wittenberg outshot Allegheny 11-10. Gators’ goalie Kylie Mason made three saves.
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