WMVO Good Times Great Oldies
GAMBIER, Ohio — Junior Eamon Dujakovich needed less than four minutes of play to eradicate any Marietta College thoughts of upsetting the Kenyon College men’s soccer team at Mavec Field late Wednesday afternoon.
Dujakovich scored Kenyon’s first goal three minutes from the start and then scored again 44 seconds later as the Owls went on to chalk up a 4-0 non-conference triumph.
That first goal came off a corner kick sent in from the right side by senior Aidan Burns. His punt traveled to the far side, where Dujakovich got airborne and headed the ball in from six yards out.
Before the Pioneers could catch their breath, Dujakovich struck again. This time racing up the middle of the field, he collected a lead pass from classmate Alem Duratovic. The pass was delivered from midfield and put Dujakovich in a one-on-one situation with Luke Price, the Marietta goalkeeper. As Price came forward to challenge, Dujakovich struck a low liner into the bottom right corner of the net.
Things settled down from there. Even with Kenyon out-shooting Marietta 8-2 during the first 45 minutes, the score remained 2-0 at the intermission.
Late in the game, Kenyon closed things out the same way it started, scoring twice more.
In the 79th minute, a long throw-in from Ben Lantz was possessed down the sideline by a Marietta defender, who tried to play the ball back to his goalkeeper. The pass, however, didn’t have enough speed on it and Kenyon first-year Pablo Portillo was in position to take over, gliding past Price and firing into an open net for his first collegiate goal.
About six minutes later, Isaac Cortez centered a pass to Duratovic, who went right up the middle of the box, faked a shot to his left and buried his team-leading fifth goal into the right corner.
The result boosted Kenyon to 5-2-0 and dropped Marietta to 2-5-1. It was Kenyon’s fifth straight win over Marietta, dating back to the 2018 season, and it kept the Owls undefeated against the Pioneers in their last 11 meetings (10-0-1), dating back to the 2009 campaign.
The Owls, who out-shot the Pioneers 17-6, will now look to extend their win streak to six on Saturday, when they host Trine University at 3:30 p.m.
