TOWSON, Md. — The Catholic men's soccer team took a short trip up to Towson to take on Goucher for its final away match of the season. In a tightly contested match, the Cardinals broke through with a goal in the early stages of the first half to take a 1-0 advantage that would stand for the remainder of the match and earn the Cardinals a key conference road victory with just three games remaining in the regular season.
After generating a couple of chances in the opening minutes of the match, the Cardinals found the match winner just 17 minutes into the half. The play started with
Ryan Kelly when he delivered a pass to
Domenico Caltabiano just inside the 18-yard box who got it back to Kelly. Kelly maneuvered around traffic and found
Ryan Kuegler with some space to the left of the net, and a sliding shot from Kuegler rippled the top of the net to give Catholic the only goal it would need to win the match.
Owen Allegro stepped up in goal for the Cardinals, making four saves in the second half to keep the clean sheet intact. Catholic locked things down defensively for the eight minutes of the match and did not allow Goucher to have a shot to close out the 1-0 win. The win moved the Cardinals to 7-5-3 (4-0-3 LC) on the season and they concluded their road schedule with a 5-4-1 record in those games.
The goal for Kuegler was the first in his career at Catholic, after registering one assist during his freshman campaign. He became the 11th different Cardinal to score this season. Kelly's assist was his third on the year, and second in Landmark play, to tie him with
Liam Giblin for the second most on the squad this season. He is one of three players who have recorded multiple assists this year.
Allegro finished the match with seven saves in total and he earned his and the team's sixth clean sheet of the season, with five of those coming in Landmark contests. The seven saves ties a career-high for Allegro, which he initially set last season against Drew.
Along with Allegro, Giblin,
Maximilian Penczar,
Corey Magro and
Charlie Paparella all played the full 90 minutes in the shutout win.
The Cardinals ran their unbeaten match streak to eight games with the win which matches the longest such streak for the team since 2022. Catholic remains unbeaten in Landmark matches this year and it currently sits third place with a two-point cushion on Scranton in the conference standings.
Catholic's next match will take place on Saturday, October 26 when they take on Wilkes for the team's senior day. Each of the 14 seniors will be honored prior to the match starting which is set for 3:30 pm at Carlini Field.
