By Michael Kelley ’14 and Gina Morrone ’14
Photo by Teddy Weiss
Quinnipiac’s Phillip Surprise ‘13 scored three goals three different ways to help defeat the Lafayette men’s soccer team 3-1 last Sunday.
A Northeast Conference first team selection, Surprise scored first off an unassisted strike past Leopard goalie Nathan McDonald ‘14. The second came on a header off a corner kick and to complete the hat trick, Surprise received a through ball, sidestepped McDonald, and tapped it in.
Lafayette was well aware of the forward going into the game. “He’s definitely a guy we had targeted as being one of Quinnipiac’s dangerous players,” Alec Golini ‘14 said. “His work rate as a forward to scrap for loose balls and pressure our defenders made him pretty successful.”
Giving up hat tricks is far from the norm for the Leopard defense. “Our defense hasn’t given up three goals in a long time, let alone to a single player,” defender Brandon Turner ‘14 said. “We took it very personally as a backline to remember this disappointing play for upcoming games.”
The Leopards’ lone goal came from Golini, who also scored two days earlier against Penn in a 3-2 victory.
The midfielder scored in the 12th minute against Quakers, his second career goal. With Penn responding just minutes later to tie the score, Blake Fink ‘13 and Tom McCutcheon ‘15 scored, putting the game out of reach.
After an injury plagued freshman year and a disappointing sophomore season, Golini is simply trying to stay healthy and contribute.
“Hopefully, I can get myself into some good opportunities to get another goal or assist in this weekend’s games,” Golini, this week’s Patriot League Honorable Mention, said. “But really, points could come from anyone on the our team, and that’s always huge.”
After surrendering five goals in the last two games, McDonald obviously isn’t pleased, but he refuses to linger on it. “We’ve had time to look at the weekend and see what we could have done better, but now we’re all focusing and getting ready for our home opener against Cornell.”
Cornell comes into tonight’s matchup boasting a 2-0 record and last week’s Ivy League Player of the Week, forward Daniel Haber ‘14.
“You can definitely expect us to pick our play up,” Golini said. “I think it will be huge for us to play in front of our home crowd.”
The Cornell game is followed by matchups against two Philadelphia teams, La Salle and Drexel.
