JOHNSON, Vt. – The Johnson State College men's soccer team saw visiting Maine Maritime Academy score three first half goals en route to a 4-0 North Atlantic Conference (NAC) victory on Sunday at Minaert Field. The win lifts the Mariners to 5-4 overall and 3-1 in the NAC while the loss drops the Badgers to 1-11, 0-4 NAC.
MMA received goals from Bryan Soucy (Windham, Maine), Nicholas George (Bangor, Maine), Christopher Gilman (Old Town, Maine), and Kyle Haslam (Lamoine, Maine) with George adding a pair of assists. Ben Russell (Farmington, Maine) also recorded an assist for the Mariners.
Trace Lecour (Charlottesville, Va.) made one save to earn the win for MMA before Jesse Perkins (Bangor, Maine) relieved him also making one save. Counterpart Sam Martin (Essex, Vt.) made six stops for Johnson.
Soucy put the Mariners on the board in the 9th minute after a pretty exchange from Russell to George who dropped a pass back to Soucy to drilled it past a diving Martin to make the score 1-0 MMA.
Under three minutes later the Mariners took advantage of a mis-struck pass by a Johnson defender as George collected in ball in the middle of the field and beat Martin for the relatively easy second goal of the game.
MMA scored their third goal of the half when Gilman was able to maneuver free among a pack of bodies at the top of the penalty box and firing a shot into the goal with six minutes remaining in the first stanza.
There the score would remain until the 72nd minute when Haslam had a George shot rebound to him for the final goal of the match that he tucked into the lower left corner.
Johnson will move on to face Lyndon State College on the road on Saturday, October 6 in their next match with a start time of 3:30 pm. The Mariners will step out of conference to play the University of Southern Maine on Wednesday, October 3 at 5:00 pm.