CHICAGO, Ill. -- The No. 25-ranked North Park Vikings (3-0-3) hosted the Warhawks from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (3-2-1) Wednesday night in what was an action-packed men's soccer match on the North Side.
The first half had a combined 17 shots between both teams with one goal scored each. North Park piled up the shots early while they maintained possession of the ball for most of the first half. However, it was Whitewater that scored first in the 16th minute from a phenomenal throw-in that landed inside the Vikings' box and knocked in by Warhawk forward Cooper Re.
After that early goal from Whitewater, it was right back to North Park keeping the ball on the Warhawk side of the pitch. In the 32nd minute of the match, freshman midfielder Bastian Eikeland fed junior forward Michal Dejworek to set up Dejworek's assist right back to Eikeland for the score to tie the game.
Eikeland's goal was one of his three shots on goal of the half. Other players to earn shots on goal were sophomore midfielders Anthony Chebat and Vidar Rydell, and graduate student midfielder Jostein Blindheim all with one shot on goal. The Vikings and Warhawks went into halftime tied at 1-1.
The Warhawks possessed the ball for the first five minutes of the second half but that soon switched to a back and forth for the remainder of the contest. On the Vikings' first corner kick of the match, in the 71st minute, Eikeland scored his second goal of the match and his third on the season that was assisted by Vidar Rydell to give North Park a 2-1 lead.
Not three minutes later, it was Rydell scoring to extend the Viking lead to 3-1, receiving a beautiful lead pass from freshman midfielder Alexander Gahm.
Whitewater responded five minutes later with a goal of their own, shrinking the Viking lead to 3-2. As the Warhawks were clawing back, sophomore forward Carson Belcher capitalized on some luck in the 87th minute when he was chasing down a ball that was rolling towards the Warhawks' 6-foot-9-inch goalkeeper. The keeper attempted to kick the ball deep, but the ball hit off Belcher and bounced over his head, spinning into the goal to put the Vikings up by their final score of 4-2.
Highlight Clip from NPU Media
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What's Next?
North Park (4-0-3) heads out to the University of Dubuque in Iowa on Saturday, September 21 for a 1pm match with the Spartans. Their next home game will be a week from today on Wednesday, September 25th at 6pm. These are the last two matches before getting into heavy conference play.
