Henry Schneiderman
Sports Editor
Last Saturday, Oct. 26, the Fighting Scots men’s soccer team ventured to Delaware, Ohio to take on the Ohio Wesleyan Battling Bishops. On the heels of a tough stretch in the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC), Wooster entered Jay Martin Soccer Complex with a taste for victory as they sought to capture the Battling Bishops. “We felt confident [going in], we’d been preparing all week,” Colin Stoner ’25 said.
The match began a level contest as the first 15 minutes remained scoreless before Ohio Wesleyan’s Franklin Rodriguez ’25 slotted one away to bring the contest 1-0 in the home team’s favor. Undeterred, the Scots continued a consistent effort that left the score unchanged until the thirty-sixth minute when the Battling Bishops’ attack found another off a strike from Jaggar Booker ’25. Following this goal, the score remained stagnant for the remainder of the half.
Going into the second half, the Scots took to the field with their heads high and put forth a strong effort, unhampered for the period’s first 20 minutes, before Rodriguez found his second of the night in the sixty-seventh minute, bringing the score to 3-0. Following this effort, Booker found the back of the net once more just 2 minutes later to cap off the night’s scoring and leave the result a tough 4-0 defeat for Wooster.
Throughout the game, Wooster delivered a number of promising attacks with half of their 10 shots being on goal — these efforts were all halted by Ohio Wesleyan’s goalkeeper, Sam Whitman ’26 who had 5 saves on the night. Overall, the Battling Bishops outshot the Scots 31-10 in a match where Wooster struggled to find their footing.
Despite the negative result, the team did manage a number of highlight performances that kept Wooster in the game. Goalkeeper Andrew Beazley ’25 amassed 4 saves in 66 minutes of play while Gabriel Thomas ’24 held down the fort with a save in his 24 minutes on the pitch. With this result, Ohio Wesleyan maintained their undefeated record in the NCAC as they grabbed their 5th conference win of the season and 10th of the year overall. Wooster’s record fell to 2-4 in the NCAC and 7-8-1 overall, as the team slipped into a negative record following a successful opening to the season. Despite this statline, the Scots held their heads high as they began to prepare for the season’s final few games. Stoner reflected, “it’s a shame things didn’t go our way, but we’re going to keep playing [our best] moving forward.”
Next up, Wooster will host Depauw University on Sat. Nov. 2 at 12:00 p.m. on the familiar pitch of Carl Dale Field as they begin their campaign to reclaim a positive record. Go Scots!
