ALISO VIEJO, CA- Senior attacking midfielder Yauri De Groot scored both of Soka's goals to lift the Lions Past the Occidental College Tigers in tonight's barn burner held at the Lion's Den Soccer Stadium.

The Tigers were the first to get on the scoreboard 20 minutes into the match, after Matthew Teplitz pulled his cross back from the byline across the six-yard box. Teplitz's cross found Nicolas Eble mid-goal, who dummied the ball to Spencer Shearer. Sheaerer finished his shot first-time, back post, putting the Tigers up 1-0 for the next 65 minutes of play despite multiple quality chances created by the Lions.

De Groot converted the equalizer in the 86^th minute of the match, after Glen McKay served a deep penetrating pass over the shoulder of the Tigers' right outside back towards De Groot in stride. De Groot collected the ball out of the air, and carried the ball toward the end line. He feinted left, then feinted right to turn his defender twice, creating enough space to pick out the upper-V of the back post. De Groot whipped his shot into the corner past Occidental's goal keeper William Baltrus, sending the game into overtime.

With the first ten minute overtime leaving the two sides at a stalemate, two minutes into the second overtime period, Gerardo De La Torre drew a foul at the top of the box to earn a free kick. De Groot stepped up to the ball, and struck it with his right foot. He bent his shot around the inside of the Tiger's defensive wall, and placed his free kick perfectly into the upper-90 to net the golden-goal game-winner in the 101^st minute of the match, lifting Soka to their second overtime victory this season.

"We're so incredibly proud of our guys right now," said Head Coach Ian Eggleston. "Occidental is a very good team, who play in a very tough conference. We knew tonight's match would be our biggest test of the season up to this point, and we worked extremely hard on a game plan over the last few days. I think Occidental started the game brighter than us, but once we settled down, we started to get into a rhythm and knocked the ball around quite well. Even when we went down 1-0, we looked like we would be able to create a few high quality chances to at least tie the score back up. Once we got the equalizer, the confidence in our group going into overtime was outstanding. Yauri scored two tremendous goals and gets a lot of the credit, but there were many outstanding performances this evening including our goal keeper Maxwel Barainca as he had several brilliant saves and kept us in the game throughout the match. Perhaps the game could have gone either way, and maybe a tie would have been a fair result too, but we are very happy with the win. We're a young team, and there's a long way to go, so we won't get carried away at this point, but the culture and togetherness of our squad is in a very good place right now. We'll need every ounce of that heading into our upcoming games."

Up next, the Lions will hit the road for the first time in 2019, traveling to Fullerton, CA, where they will face the Hope International Royals on Saturday Sept. 7. The match will be held at Fullerton College.
 
 



NOTES: This is the second meeting in program history between the Lions and the Tigers … Soka in now 2-0 against Occidental, with their first program win coming in 2010 where Soka defeated Occidental 4-3 at on the road… De Groot now has six goals and two assists on the season, combining for 14 points in three matches… Occidental outshot Soka 19-14… Soka put seven of their 14 shots on frame while Occidental put six of their 19 shots on target… Soka's Barainca made five saves on the day… a yellow card was shown to Occidental's Nicolas Eble.