BEREA, Ohio – Sophomore All-Ohio Athletic Conference forward Danny Ruple (Berea/Berea-Midpark) scored the "golden goal" in the 100th minute as the Baldwin Wallace University men's soccer team put together a gritty performance to secure a 3-2 double overtime win against The College of Wooster at Carl Dale Field.
On tired legs less than 48 hours after Tuesday night's game against Allegheny, the Yellow Jackets played a 0-0 tie into the 43rd minute when sophomore forward Paulo Nunes gave Wooster (3-3) a one goal advantage going into halftime. 10 minutes into the second half, the Fighting Scots took a 2-0 lead when sophomore forward Max Rochester finished the goal from 6 yards out off a throw-in from the right side.
All of the action for the Yellow Jackets, however, came in the final 20 minutes. At the end of the game, BW benefited from a flurry restarts, which allowed Head Coach Reid Ayers a chance to bring some players in and get fresh legs on the field.
Freshman midfielder Bryce Posner (Aurora) ran through three separate tackles, managing to maintain possession through all three collisions, and broke in behind the defense to receive a pass from Ruple and finished inside the box to put BW on the board. Posner was credited with his first collegiate goal and Ruple with his fourth assist of the season and 10th of his short career.
Time became the Yellow Jackets worst enemy as minutes and seconds kept ticking away. With 16 seconds remaining in the game, sophomore midfielder Timmy Jonas (Fairview Park/St. Edward) took a corner kick which bounced around all the bodies clustered in front of the Wooster goal as the clock continued to tick down. Sophomore midfielder Joey Geither (Parma/Normandy) was the right man in the right place at the right time and scored his third goal of the season off the Jonas assist to tie the game with nine seconds remaining.
Energized by the turn of events in regulation, the Yellow Jackets came out and pressed Wooster during the first overtime. Each team took two shots during the period but failed to score, sending the game to a second overtime.
With junior forward Logan Davis (Hinckley/Medina Highland) and Posner displaying a lot of hustle at the start of the second overtime, freshman forward Michael Snowball (Pittsburgh, Pa./Fox Chapel) got a few touches on the left side, passing the ball off to Ruple, who hit it in with his left leg for the golden goal 38 seconds into the period. It was his fourth game-winning goal in two seasons in the Brown & Gold.
Defensively, junior defenders JT Taubeneck (Parma/Normandy) and Jeremy Foust (Strongsville) locked down the back line to keep the Yellow Jackets in the game. Sophomore goalkeeper Patrick Mehal (Richfield/Revere) made three of his four saves in the second half to notch his second win in goal this season.
Riding the emotional high from the double overtime victory, BW will try to maintain the momentum when both the men's and women's soccer teams travel down to Bluffton to take on Bluffton University on Saturday, Sept. 16. The men will kick off at 3:30 p.m.
