With mere seconds to play in a scoreless first half against Madonna University last Saturday, Felipe Carli found himself with the ball just outside the center circle.

A few seconds later, the ball found itself 50 yards downfield in the back of the net as the clock read 0:01.

Carli’s stunner of a goal sent the Goshen College men’s soccer team into a frenzy. The energy in front of a home crowd grew even stronger as, eighteen minutes into the second half, Lucas Bontrager gave the Maple Leafs a 2-0 lead after a beautiful pass from Mathurin Allawai. 

It was a nice lead while it lasted.

After a quick goal from the Crusaders to make it 2-1, Goshen held on frantically to their lead as the clock ticked closer and closer to zero. With less than six minutes to play, though, Madonna won a corner kick, and an ensuing deflection tied the game at two.

Three minutes later, the Crusaders’ Ryushin Hirami fired the ball towards the Goshen penalty area from 30 yards out. When it took a sudden deflection off a Leafs defender, keeper Matias de Fonseca could only watch over his shoulder as the ball trickled ever so slowly into the right corner of the net to give Madonna the decisive goal and keep the Leafs’ winless streak going. 

Goshen now holds an 0-4-2 record going into their Wednesday night matchup at Georgetown College. 

The women’s soccer team also fell to Madonna on Saturday, losing 2-0 away. They are now 3-3, with their next match on Thursday against Olivet College. The home game kicks off at 6:00 p.m.

After dropping their first conference match to Grace College, 3-0, the GC women’s volleyball team lost all four matches this weekend in the Liz Lykowski Memorial Tournament. Sadie Brenneman was named to the all-tournament team for her second straight year, but the Leafs lost eight straight sets to close out the tournament.

The team, 2-13 on the season, will now jump into the thick of Crossroads League play, with a Wednesday night home match against University of St. Francis followed by a trip to Indiana Wesleyan University on Friday.

A bright spot for Goshen athletics came on Friday evening, when local runner Drew Hogan led the men’s cross country team to an eighth-place finish in their first race of the season: the highly competitive, eighteen-team Twilight Invite. 

Hogan’s 8k time of 25:53, good for 27th place, is the eighth fastest by a first-year in Goshen history. Nelson Kemboi and Liam Elias were right behind him in 33rd and 34th, respectively. Both runners finished with a time of 26:03.4.

The Maple Leafs’ next race is on Saturday, when both the men and the women will compete in the IU-Kokomo Cross Country Invitational.