The College of DuPage men’s soccer team nearly completed a comeback on Saturday against Madison College to finish the regular season with a record of 5-6-4. Despite the loss, the Chaparrals celebrated their sophomores prior to the game to highlight their contributions to COD as student-athletes.

Although the Chaparrals ended the season with a loss, head men’s soccer coach Zac Ludwig was pleased with his team’s effort to come back from behind and reflected on their progress this season.

“It’s an unfortunate result and we had our chances to tie it, but it didn’t go our way,” said Ludwig. “The guys really fought hard to try to get [the goal against us] back and it just didn’t happen for us. This season, we took a really big step forward. I know our record may not reflect that, but in terms of the quality and level that we played, we battled well with the top teams and lots of our guys grew and developed as players.”

After a back-and-forth battle between the two teams in the first half, Madison scored a goal with only four minutes left in the half to give the Wolfpack a 1-0 going into halftime.

Shortly after, sophomore Guy DeFeo nearly scored from a freekick attempt after hitting the top right corner of the crossbar.

At the start of the second half, Madison College set the tone early by scoring from a counterattack nine minutes into the half to make the score 2-0.

With 25:36 left in the game, freshman Erwin Morales scored a much-needed goal to give COD hope for a second-half comeback and to make the score of the game 2-1.

“We started off the game a bit sloppy and started picking up momentum in the second half,” said Morales. “It was a good game. If we played how we played in the second half in the first half, we could’ve definitely kept the game closer by tying or winning it.”

After struggling to find an offensive spark late in the second half, freshman Archie Murphy was fouled inside the penalty box and given a penalty by the referee with only three minutes left in the game.

Despite being given the late penalty, Murphy’s penalty kick attempt was saved after Madison’s goalkeeper successfully jumped towards the right side of the goal to avoid a tie and complete a 2-1 victory over the Chaparrals.

The Chaparrals finished the regular season with a record of 5-6-4 and will be losing six sophomores this year.