As promised, the cross-town rivalry between the Marquette Golden Eagles and the UW Milwaukee Panthers reared its ugly head. As the first game of the fall season, the Golden Eagles were ready to play, and what better team to start with than questionably one of its biggest rivals the Panthers.
After a tough season last year, along with losing a strong group of seniors, the Golden Eagles looked to bounce back and start the season with a bang. Which is exactly what they did.
With new Defensive Coach Rick Rameriz handling the defense and Head Coach Panchito Ojeda running the offense, the Golden Eagles looked like a new team.
Marquette played hard the first quarter and finished the half strong leading 6 to 3. By the end of the game both teams had fought hard and scored multiple goals. The final score was 11 to 8, with Marquette coming out on top even though they played man down for a good portion of the game because of penalties.
The new additions to the offense such as Padeen Reed, TJ Gallus, Pat Van Dusen and Dan Bissing helped propel Marquette to a vital win. Each of the four players had at least one goal. They also got help from returning players Pat Mulshine, Thomas Sikes and Ian Chadwick. The defense was also strong, holding UWM to 6 goals until the 4th quarter and killing a penalty when they were 3 men down.
“The team battled hard on Saturday,” Ojeda said. “We laid out some specific goals around controlling the possession time, winning the ground ball battle, and out shooting our opponent. We did all of these things which put us in position to win.
I think the whole team sees improvement areas in our lack of focus on the details as we made some mistakes early, but we are only playing our second game so still time to improve. Now, we must get back to work as we have only two weeks to prepare for some excellent competition at the Lake Front Classic being played at Carthage College.
Overall, it was an excellent game and the young men worked hard and did what it took to win. Thank you to UWM for coming out for the game and playing. They will be a tough foe once again come Spring.”
Captain and Goaltender Brian “Pirate” Cassidy also commented on the game.
“I was really looking forward to this game because it gave us our first real glimpse of our potential,” Cassidy said. ”As a team with a bunch of new parts, it was nice to see how they all fell into place in our system. I felt like our offense played with a killer mentality that maybe we haven’t shown in the previous years I’ve been here. What I mean by that is that it seemed like everyone was catching the ball in a position where they were a threat– everyone wanted to get a goal. By doing that, I think it opened up more opportunities for us.
On the defensive side– I was very impressed with how my fellow defenders responded to being man down a whole lot. I believe we were scored on the first 3 times we were man down, but after that we made the right adjustments and never panicked. I think that seeing the defense respond that way is really a great sign this early on in the year. Also, besides the man-down goals, we were very solid against equal man opportunities. I expect big things in the near future.”
The team’s next game is at the Lake Front Classic being played at Carthage College on October 10 against University of Minnesota Duluth. The game is at 11:30.
Get out there and support your Golden Eagles.
