Broncbuster men drop close match to Northeastern

By Mike Pilosof

Sterling, CO-In their first two matches of the season, Garden City men's soccer coach Scott Westbrook saw his team make tremendous strides despite not scoring a single goal. On Monday, the team that the first-year coach envisioned seeing this year came to fruition even in a losing effort.

Northeastern scored twice in the final 12 minutes of the match, overcoming a 3-2 deficit to hand Garden City a 5-4 loss.

"I don't care what anyone says, this is a good soccer team," Westbrook said afterwards. "We just haven't had the ball bounce our way yet."

The scores do not show it, but Garden City outplayed both Trinidad State and Otero to start the season. You could make the argument that the same thing happened on Monday.

Garden City took their first lead of the 2017 season when Joel Sanchez found the back of the net in the 70^th minute to make it 3-2. The Plainsmen came right back to tie it on Mustafa Nadeem's goal on an assist from Paul Liagre eight minutes later. Northeastern then took the advantage 4-3 after Brodie Hayes snuck one past goalie Kender Acevedo.

But the Broncbusters stuck with it, and James Gonzalez tallied the equalizer with five minutes left in the match.

"We are doing what we need to to win matches," Westbrook said. "It's just unfortunate that it hasn't resulted in a win yet."

The final blow came with two minutes remaining in the match. Mariano Escobedo slipped a perfect pass to Hayes, who flipped it into the net for the eventual game winner.

"If we keep doing what we're doing, we'll be fine, Westbrook said.

Broncbusters retun home on Thursday to face Cloud County at 5 p.m.