Brooks Hatch: Friday soccer update Comments
Danny Mwanga, the 2008 Pac-10 men’s soccer Freshman of the Year, didn’t score on Friday night in Oregon State’s 3-1 victory over San Jose State at Lorenz Field. It would be a mistake, however, to say he didn’t have an impact on the game.
He did. Mwanga almost scored once on a spectacular bicycle kick shot, and the Spartans often marked him with two, or sometimes three, players at the same time. That opened up some real estate for the rest of the Beavers and sophomore John Swenson responded with two goals and Matt Drake added the third.
“Danny is going to have an effect on the game,” goals or no goals, coach Steve Simmons said. “Sometimes it’s going to be the obvious, and sometimes it’s going to be the not-so-obvious, like tonight.
“One of the things I really took a close look at was, ‘Are we going to make plays off of Danny?’ He’s going to do his thing, but we all have to step up because you know, going into games, that he’s going to be a marked man, in different ways,” and if attracts multiple defenders, someone else is bound to be running free and must capitalize.
That happened on Friday, and the Beavers won their opener as a result.
“I was very happy that other guys stepped up, and made plays,” Simmons said.
The Beavers play again at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, against CSU Bakersfield, a 3-0 winner over Houston Baptist on Friday in the other game at the OSU/Nike Challenge.
The crowd of 472 almost filled the west grandstand, which was reopened on Friday after sitting empty in 2008 because it was deteriorating. It’s been repaired and the sight lines are far superior to the temporary seats used on the east side in 2008.
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The OSU women also won Friday, 4-0 against Nevada. They are 3-1 and have won three consecutive games after a 1-0, season-opening loss to Portland State.
Nice sidebar story here; the winning goalie was Corvallis High graduate Ashley Wood, who has battled back from a pretty serious knee injury suffered in 2007. She had two saves and it was the third shutout of her career.
She was the starter in 2007 and was 6-3-1, with two shutouts, in 11 games before tearing an ACL in a practice injury. Last year, the Beavers had so few players she was moved up to midfielder and defender, where she played just 56 minutes in parts of five games.
The Beavers have already scored nine goals; they had just 16 in 19 games all last season.
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Former Beavers offensive lineman Adam Speer was released by the Atlanta Falcons on Friday.
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