#1 Knights defeat Northern Virginia Community College Nighthawks 4-1

By Morgan Pinkney

Rosedale, Md. - The #1 CCBC Essex Knights Men's soccer team defeated the Northern Virginia Community College Nighthawks 4-1, in a thrilling performance. Speaking postgame about his team's performance, Knights Head Coach Joe Fiedler said, "honestly I thought we started off okay, we kind of gave up a bad goal to the Nighthawks. But give our guys credit they came right back and got serious. After we scored our first goal I think we played very well, I thought we did mostly everything right. But we did not score enough, we had many chances and opportunities to put goals in the net but didn't quite capitalize on all of them". 

The Knights gave up a free kick goal early in the contest at the 3:51 mark , which fired the Knights up as they put a goal through the net at the 5:50 mark of the first half. The Knights would go on to score two more goals in the first period, a penalty kick from Angel Chavez to make the score 2-1, and also a goal by Cesar Rubio-Amaya to go up 3-1. 

The final goal of the game was scored by Zach Eichelberger mere seconds into the second half. It was assisted by Noel Sotelo Garcia, his second of the season. Although the Knights had another dozen shots before the final whistle, the contest had already been put out of reach for the Nighthawks.

After the Nighthawks early goal, the Knights defense played lights out the remainder of the game. The Knights dominated in the shot attempts category with seventeen shot attempts in the first half and fourteen shot attempts in the second half, compared to the Nighthawks eight total shots, four in each half of the contest. The Knights smothered the Nighthawks offense. Each time they moved the ball to the Knights defensive side, there were a host of Knights already attempting to steal the ball. The Knights had a total of six corner kicks to the Nighthawks one. The Nighthawks did out save the Knights with an amount of ten to one. 

The Knights will play their next game on Thursday, September 7th when they travel to the Anne Arundel Riverhawks. Kick-off is scheduled for 5pm!