FULLERTON, CA- The Soka University Lions (3-1) dropped their first match of the 2019 season to the Royals of Hope International University (5-0) on Saturday afternoon.

The Royals got on the scoreboard early, after Gabriel Oropeza converted a penalty kick in the seventh minute of the match. They tallied their second goal at the 35 minute mark, after Luis Gastelum got on the end of Sergio Vega's pass to give Hope the 2-0 lead at halftime, despite the Lions outshooting the Royals 6-4 in the first period of play.

Soka's left outside back Harrison Gilmer netted the Lions' lone goal of the game in the 66^th minute. Gilmer got his head to the ball off of a corner kick served into the box by Gerardo De La Torre. Gilmer re-directed his shot back into the near post, bringing the score to 2-1 with over twenty minutes left to play.

With a final push from the Lions to find the equalizer, Hope's Vega thwarted their attacking efforts, and added an insurance goal for the Royals in the 74^th minute, after finishing his chance created by Christopher Ribet, bringing the final score to 3-1.

"We were beaten by a very good Hope International team today," said Head Coach Ian Eggleston. "They have a very talented and deep squad, generating some really high quality movement in all areas of the field. I thought we defended very well today from start to finish, but didn't really look to knock the ball around until after the water break 25 minutes into the match. Once our guys started to possess, we made a good game of it, and finished the first half with more high quality chances than Hope did. The second half was fairly even within the run of play, and after we scored it could have been interesting towards the end, but, Hope did a good job to put us away with their third goal. There are a lot of positives for our side to take away from this afternoon's match, and we're proud of how our team responded to being coached, and the adjustments we made during the game. We've gone from being a very direct team a couple of years ago, to looking to possess and unlock our opponents more. The better team won today, but our coaching staff is really happy with our progress over the past month, and are excited for the next week of training sessions and games."

Up next, the Lions will return home to host Pomona-Pitzer College on Wednesday Sept. 11, 2019. Kickoff will is set for 7:30 p.m.
 
 



 
NOTES: This is the sixth meeting between Soka and Hope… the Lions are now 0-5-1 against the Royals… Soka's  Gilmer scored his second goal of the 2019 season… Hope outshot Soka 11-10… Soka's Maxwel Barainca made one save on the day… a yellow card was shown to Soka's Linus Rueegger.