Miners Win One, Lose One in Durango

Right: Goalkeeper Zach Peterson delivers the ball during an earlier match against New Mexico Highlands University in Socorro. Tech won that match with a score of 4-2. (photo courtesy of El Defensor Chieftain).

SOCORRO, N.M., Sept. 27, 2006 -- On September 16, the NMT Miners men's soccer team achieved their first on-the-road victory in four tries over an always skilled Ft. Lewis College (Durango, CO) club team with a score of 2-1. Their only other win over Ft. Lewis came last October at home in Socorro, with an identical score.

Miners played very confident soccer despite giving up the first goal at 22 minutes. At 32 minutes, (Socorro native) Nick Smallridge used quick footwork to beat his defender and then loft the ball over the goalkeeper’s head from a near impossible angle, putting the Miners on the scoreboard. The emotional highlight of the game was the winning goal scored by Brent Henderson in the 50th minute. A diagonal pass from Smallridge landed directly on the foot of Henderson in full stride, who nailed a left-footed shot from 20 yards into the back of the net. This was Henderson's first ever goal in an official soccer match. Henderson, a 30-year-old, Geophysics graduate student, exemplifies the can-do attitude, having never played organized soccer until he joined the Miners last year.

While Ft. Lewis matched Tech with nine shots on goal, the deciding factor was in the goalkeeping, with Zach Peterson (sophomore, engineering) racking up several outstanding saves in the final minutes of the game as “The Fort” desperately tried to tie the game up.

While the Miners proved that they could come from being down a goal to win, the next day they proved the opposite. In the second match of the double header, the Miners were up 1-0 early with a header from Galen Hartenberger (senior, pre-med) off a cross from James Martin (sophomore, civil engineering). For most of the half, Tech kept “the Fort” out of the goal with compact defense and excellent goal keeping, but in the forty-second minute, the Miners defense turned over a ball with a weak lobbing pass into the middle of the field. The Fort's midfielder intercepted the pass with a quick header to his striker who immediately turned and fired a shot over the unsuspecting Peterson. Three minutes later, the same player buried another one to send the Miners into halftime shock. (Unfortunately, this second goal came after the first half should have ended, but the referee had lost track of time).

The Miners struggled for the first 20 minutes of the second half, giving up two more goals, the last by the same striker, who ended up with a hat-trick. Tech rearranged players during the last 20 minutes to go more offensive, but only managed one more goal in the 81st minute, again by Hartenberger. It was too little too late, and the score ended at 2-4.

The Miners host Ft. Lewis on Oct. 15 to determine the superior team for 2006.

-NMT-