The Winthrop men’s soccer team won its first game of the season Thursday, marking the team’s first regular-season victory in 663 days.
After finishing last season with an 0-8-1 record, the Eagles are now 1-0 this fall following a trip to Stetson University, where they defeated the Hatters in overtime by a score of 4-3.
While Stetson took the lead early with a goal in the 11th minute, Winthrop equalized with a goal in the 29th minute and was the first to score in the second half to go up 2-1.
In the 82nd minute, Stetson evened the score to 2-2, and with less than three minutes remaining in regulation, the Eagles allowed another goal, giving the Hatters a 3-2 advantage.
“When I first came back from conceding a goal, I was pretty pissed off,” junior Sean Green said. “Honestly, I wasn’t happy.”
Green channeled his emotion into his next kick — a shot on goal from the middle of the field.
“[I was] standing in the center circle and Tyler Hornsby there, he’s looking at me,” Green said. “He’s like, ‘Check out the keeper; he’s off his line a little bit.’ Gave me a little wink egging me on, so I thought, ‘Okay, you know, why not?’”
Green’s strike sailed from midfield, over the goalie’s head and into the back of the net just seconds after the clock had restarted. The goal ranks Top 5 all-time in NCAA D-I for fastest consecutive goals scored by opposing teams.
“I’ve done a lot of ball striking. At a previous school, it was one of our main focuses,” Green said. “Glad to say that’s definitely paid off now.”
With Green’s goal leveling the score at 3-3, the game went to overtime.
“When we scored, we came up all together, and we said, ‘Okay, let’s go and win this,’” sophomore Bryant Jimenez-Pearce said.
The two teams were scoreless for the first eight minutes of the ten-minute overtime period. Then, in the 98th minute, senior Jonathan Foster found Jimenez-Pearce right in front of the goal, and the midfielder booted the ball in for the win.
“I told the guys before the game, ‘If I score, I’m gonna take my shirt off,’” Jimenez-Pearce said. “That happened.”
Jimenez-Pearce was not the only one to take his shirt off as Winthrop’s players rushed the field in celebration.
“Couldn’t be more proud of this entire group tonight. Almost at a loss of words,” head coach Daniel Ridenhour said following the game. “It’s amazing right now that we come down here, and we can fight, and we can compete and we get a result just to get us going.”
On Saturday morning, the Eagles practiced in preparation for Sunday’s match against the South Carolina Gamecocks.
“All the guys are buzzing [and] you can see the energy a little [more now],” Green said.
“I know a lot of these guys had a pretty rough year last year. So having that to kick-start our year and really pretty much wipe the slate clean and get started, to know that this is the new future of Winthrop soccer is really exciting.”
The Eagles returned from Columbia having suffered a 4-1 loss to the Gamecocks but will look to bounce back against Liberty on Friday in Lynchburg, Virginia.
