North Manchester, IN — Late in the second half of Tuesday’s men’s soccer match with host Manchester College, a small dog got away from its owner and sprinted onto the field. The match was halted while several players took turns lunging at the animal so play could resume. Eventually, the dog was captured by a Manchester defender.

It was the only thing the Spartans could stop all day.

Goshen (5-0-1, 0-0) rattled off a 4-1 win over the Spartans Tuesday afternoon, giving fifth-year head coach Tavi Mounsithiraj his first career coaching win at Manchester while keeping the Leafs’ current momentum surging. Goshen has now won five consecutive matches — all of which decided by at least three goals — with the Mid-Central Conference season opener just four days away.

“It’s always nice to win matches, but we’ve got to do a better job communicating and not making as many mistakes,” Mounsithiraj said. “We have only a few days to prepare for a very important match of the season. It will be a big test for us and we’ve got some work to do if we want to compete in the MCC.”

Mounsithiraj’s tone may have been slightly different had Manchester not opened the scoring in Tuesday’s match with an easy tap-in goal with just two minutes left to play in the first half. After dominating possession for most of the period, Mounsithiraj’s squad again let a simple mistake in the back cost them. The Leafs’ defense mishandled what appeared to be a routine ball in front of the goal, and the Spartans took advantage: A empty-net tap-in score with just two minutes remaining in the first half made the score 1-0, Manchester, at the intermission.

“This match here always seems tough to me,” Mounsithiraj said. “I’m not sure what it is. We had some good looks at the goal early on and maintained possession quite well, but that does not guarantee you’ll win the match. This Manchester team was putting pressure on us all over the field and eventually they got a goal due to our mistake. We struggled the last time we were here (a 1-0 loss on Sept. 24, 2003), and I didn’t want that to continue. I told the guys (at halftime) that if we were going to lose this match, it wasn’t going to be with that goal we gave up. We needed to get back in the match ASAP.”

Just three minutes into the second stanza, Mounsithiraj got his wish.

Freshman phenom Cody Felton knocked in a point blank shot after one of seven Goshen corner kicks, with junior Joel Miller sending the ball his way to set up the score. It was Felton again just 12 minutes later, receiving a looping pass from junior Joel Gonzalez at the top of the 18-yard box. From that moment on it was a display of Felton’s deft footwork, as the first-year forward calmly brought the ball down through traffic and volleyed the ball off one bounce into the upper corner of the net.

With the Spartans sensing the match slipping away, Mounsithiraj’s team made sure of it. Just one minute after Felton’s second score, sophomore Tony Janzen sliced a ball off the baseline that crossed just out of reach of Spartan goalkeeper Andrew Kaminskis and his defensive mates. Waiting patiently past the black and gold defenders was freshman David Shenk, who calmly placed the ball into the back of the unguarded net for a 3-1 Goshen lead.

“The boys really responded after halftime,” Mounsithiraj said. “We needed to attack with more speed and urgency than we did in the first half, and we did just that.”

The Leafs received their final goal at the 78th minute-mark when junior Rueben Yoder took a pass from freshman Eduardo Vargas and blasted a rocket off the post, handing Kaminskis his second-highest goals-allowed total of the season. Kaminskis has newfound ties to Goshen College athletics, as his mother, Linda Kaminskis, took over as the Leafs’ head athletic trainer at the start of the school year.

“Andrew Kaminskis had a busy day in goal and his mom was ready on the GC bench for any injury that came our way,” Mounsithiraj said. “Fortunately none did.”

Goshen will now look to continue its push as it enters league play on Saturday, when the team will return to the Goshen College Soccer Complex for a big-time tilt against Spring Arbor University. Match time is set for 2 p.m.