The undefeated College of DuPage men’s soccer team hosted the Harper Hawks on Sept. 3 in a close, nail-biting match that came down to the final minute. The Chaparrals have an overall young team that has 18 freshmen and only four returning players from the year prior. Even though they are young, The College of DuPage men’s soccer team rallied late to beat Harper College 2-1, rallying to stay undefeated with two second-half goals.

To begin the match, the Harper Hawks were pushing early and had a few opportunities on goal, but all shots missed wide. Harper was dominating with time of possession by having the ball on CODs half of field for a lot of the first half, mostly because of COD’s sloppy ball control. 

The field referee had himself a busy day handing out yellow cards, and the first one was handed out to COD’s Rocky Nicoski-Rios in the ninth minute of the match after a slide tackle that took the Harper player to the ground. Nine minutes later, DuPage’s Erik Crisostomo got added to the book as well, and five minutes after that, Harper’s Eddie Montes joined the fun with a yellow card of his own. 

With 10 minutes remaining in the half, the Hawks struck first with a cross from the left side into the box, where Miguel Pena headed it into the back of the net to give Harper a 0-1 lead. COD had multiple chances for an equalizer at the end of the half but couldn’t pull through, going into halftime down 0-1.

Coming out of the break, DuPage’s spacing and communication were much better than in the first half, but they still couldn’t tie the game. That all changed in the 70th minute, when Ayan Sheikh found the back of the net from a cross by Joel Ostola to tie the game at 1-1. 

COD kept putting pressure on Harper’s defense, which led to a direct free kick 10 yards outside of the box. Dominic Landato took the free kick, which hit off the crossbar and bounced in front of fellow Chap Jason Hufnagle for him to kick it into the goal to grab a 2-1 lead. 

Harper’s offense went into a do-or-die stage, and for the last 10 minutes they were taking a shot on goal every time they had an opening on COD’s half of the field, but COD’s defense stood strong and didn’t let up a goal to solidify the win and to move to 4-0 on the season.

Sophomore midfielder Gustavo Ramirez talked about being down 1-0 after the first half: “Coach talked about, ‘[being down] 45 minutes; you can’t let it go like that.’ In the second half, we locked in, and got that dub.”

Head Coach Matt Hanna said, “We had some clear-cut chances at the end of the half and could have been up 2-1, so we knew that we weren’t playing well. We just thought if we just stuck to our game plan, we would get back on top, and that’s what they did in the second half.”

Men’s soccer starts back up on Sept. 7 when they host Black Hawk College at their home stadium, Bjarne Ullsvik Stadium, at 11 a.m.