The Rowan men’s soccer team won its second consecutive game in the New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) after a 4-0 win over the Rutgers-Newark Scarlet Raiders on Saturday, Sept. 30, at the Rowan Soccer and Lacrosse Complex.
After a slow start to the season, the team has seemingly started to find its footing just in time for NJAC play.
“I feel good, I mean, we’re playing good at the right time of the season,” head coach Scott Baker said. “Rutgers-Newark is a good team, and we’re getting all our guys involved and still getting results and shutouts and it’s all good.”
The offense picked up right where they left off, as the Profs scored three goals in the first half to set the tone for the day. Turlough Gartlan found the back of the net in the fourth minute after Johnny Troiano set him up with a header.
Troiano also scored his team-leading ninth goal during the 15th minute, as he managed to get past three Rutgers-Newark defenders and find an opening for the shot, and right before the half, Luke Yates added an extra goal after his header snuck right past the outstretched hands of the Rutgers-Newark goalie.
With the recent offensive surge, the team’s confidence is higher than ever.
“Going into the game, it’s easy to be confident when you win your last game 6-0,” Troiano said. “10 goals in two games from the guys so we have the confidence right now. We’re going into the momentum.”
The scoring wasn’t limited to the first half either, as Sergio Sola Garcia netted his second goal of the season in the 61st minute after a header from Davide Caputo’s corner kick. The goal gave Caputo his team-leading fifth assist of the season.
“It’s mostly just staying engaged and seeing the play happen,” Caputo said. “With the assist, I just play the balls in with the right guys, just around the other side to put them in and it’s all about trust”.
With the intensity high in the second half, Charlie Scanlon came on as a substitute for Dylan Aportela during the 79th minute and kept a clean sheet that Aportela did before him.
“I feel good, obviously I’m out there to do my job,” Scanlon said. “So is Dylan right here to do the same job but at the end of the day, it’s just for the clean sheet.”
One thing that the Profs focused on was their energy level. They believed that a high energy level could help lead them to victory.
“To keep the energy and the focus that we had against Jersey City,” Baker said. “It looked like a real easy game but the energy that we brought and the focus that we brought to Jersey City, we want to make sure that we started that today and we did.”
Now with just conference games remaining on the schedule, Coach Baker believes there are some things that the Profs can still improve.
“Our focus and our discipline. We need to keep the standard that we can be at, and we have to keep that [one] hundred percent of the time,” Baker said. “We had some dips in the play today and we kind of let them back in the game a little bit, so I think if we can get that focus and discipline up to a higher level, we’ll see better results.”
The Profs will look to keep it rolling when they take on Kean University on Wednesday, Oct. 4, at 4 p.m. in Union, NJ.
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