(Official Stats) Grand Rapids, MI — With his team moments away from playing its most important match in recent history, Goshen head men’s soccer coach Tavi Mounsithiraj reached deep into the pocket of his Adidas overcoat and pulled out a full plastic bag.

As the Cornerstone University team gathered in a huddle prior to the start of the 2006 NAIA Region VIII Championship match, Mounsithiraj diligently began sprinkling the substance onto the field directly in front of his team’s bench.

The mystery material?

Turf — freshly plucked — from the Goshen College Soccer Complex pitch.

“I wanted our guys to feel like they were at home today, so I brought a little bit of home to us,” Mounsithiraj said. “I think it may have loosened them up a bit and got them ready to play.”

A little over two hours later, Mounsithiraj realized the grass truly is greener on the other side — of penalty-kick shootouts.

After concluding two of its last three seasons in penalty-kick decisions, the Goshen College men’s soccer team captured a 4-2 PK verdict over Cornerstone in the NAIA Region VIII Championship, securing its place in the 20-team NAIA National Championship field next week. The win propelled Goshen (15-5-3, 6-1-1) to near legendary intra-program status, as the institution advances to the NAIA National Championships for the first time since 1977.

After 90 minutes of regulation soccer and a pair of overtimes yielded a 1-1 tie score Saturday, Mounsithiraj sent out five players for the right to advance to the big dance. As it turns out, the biggest difference maker didn’t get to attempt a single penalty kick.

But he stopped two.

Senior goalkeeper Craig Welscott saved Cornerstone’s first and fourth penalty kick attempts, helping Goshen to a joyous return back to campus.

“I’m just so happy for our seniors,” an emotional Mounsithiraj said following the match. “For me, this is my wildest dream. I feel like I’ve got a lot of coaching left to do to deserve this, but our guys have just played so hard. For our seniors, this is icing on the cake. They all deserve it, and I couldn’t be any happier for them.”

Advancing to the NAIA Region VIII Championship for the first time in program history — the NAIA adopted the current post-season structure in the mid-1980’s — the task was tall: Defeat a Cornerstone team, with just a single loss on the season, on its home field. With Goshen the number one seeded squad from the Mid-Central Conference and the Golden Eagles the top seed from the Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference, the NAIA’s annual, alternating site rule came into effect — a regulation that gave the WHAC team home field advantage this year.

“Going in I’m not sure we felt much pressure,” Mounsithiraj said. “We were set in what we were going to try to do, and when we got to the field there were about 30 or 40 Goshen fans barbequing in the parking lot. We knew we were in good company then.”

With a crowd of over 200 from the Maple City urging the squad on, the Leafs went to work relatively quickly. Taking early possession of the ball and putting pressure on the Golden Eagles resulted in Goshen claiming the first corner kick of the contest, a result that would pay great dividends for Mounsithiraj’s squad.

Going with a stiffening wind during the first 90 minutes, Mounsithiraj elected to line up his team in front of the Cornerstone goal instead of placing senior Joel Miller at the far post. As classmate Eric Bixler put his left foot into the ball, the wind helped bend it toward the Golden Eagle net. Cornerstone keeper Brent Grube was the first to get a hand on the ball, but he couldn’t corral it in. Junior Nate Montiel headed the ball toward the ground, and junior forward Tony Janzen slipped the ball back to Miller.

Patiently waiting in the Golden Eagles’ six-yard box, Miller blasted a shot into the back of the net for a 1-0 lead just 16 minutes into the match.

Perhaps not as dramatic as his numerous headed scores off corner kicks this season, but effective nonetheless.

“I thought we maintained possession really well early on, but Cornerstone kept the pace,” Mounsithiraj said. “Dutch (Welscott) had a couple good saves early, but winning the first corner kick of the game was big. A one-goal lead is traditionally enough for a good defensive team, but we wanted to continue to press pretty hard. Cornerstone is a very good team, so we weren’t going to just sit on things.”

With Janzen making a number of pushes up front, it appeared Goshen would tack onto its advantage. Cornerstone’s defense would not budge, however, and the Leafs went into the intermission with a 1-0 lead.

Sensing the obvious urgency of the situation, Cornerstone began to press forward with alarming intensity in the second half. With the wind now at their backs, the Golden Eagles used a strength-in-numbers approach to turn Mounsithiraj’s squad on the defensive.

“They made some adjustments at halftime and put a lot of people up front,” Mounsithiraj said. “They were a very physical team, and by the match-ups they were stronger and more physical than we were. They committed more people up front and were all over us in the first 25 minutes of the second half.”

That aggressive approach allotted for an equalizer score in the game’s 60th minute, as Cornerstone’s Tom Skilling — the NAIA Region VII Player of the Year — took a quick-hit throw-in and slid the ball to teammate Sam Oberlin. Standing 12 yards away from the Leafs’ goal at a dead-on angle, Oberlin blasted the ball past Welscott to tie the game at 1-1.

The Cornerstone attack would not end there.

“They still were coming strong at us for the next 15 minutes, but we finally settled down in the last 15 (minutes of regulation),” Mounsithiraj said. “We did a better job (defensively), and kept things from getting too dangerous as the game wore on.”

Perhaps anticipating a penalty-kick showdown, the overtimes came and went in what seemed like an instant. Only a breakaway opportunity from Janzen — he missed his shot wide to the left — offered either team much hope of ending things with 22 people on the field, as a PK parade looked to be a certainty.

“I thought we outplayed them in both overtime periods,” Mounsithiraj said. “We were ready for the Pks, though. Ever since our conference tournament started, we’ve practiced PK situations all the way down to how the referee waits to blow his whistle and everything. We’ve simulated exactly what you’d experience in a game, and I think that helped. Our guys had their spots picked three weeks ago. I told them, just put it where we’ve been practicing.”

What Mounsithiraj did not have was a healthy initial five shooters, however, as sophomore Garet Osterloo left the contest with a recurring ankle injury midway through the second half and did not return. With Osterloo out, Mounsithiraj elected to go with the lineup of Miller, Janzen, sophomore Cody Felton, senior Adam Yoder and — taking Osterloo’s spot — senior Jesse Woodworth.

“Maybe the most important thing for us in the PKs was winning the coin toss,” Mounsithiraj said. “We wanted to shoot first and put the pressure on them.”

Miller and Welscott certainly did.

Miller connected on the first try of the afternoon, and Cornerstone’s Skilling approached the ball next.
Diving to his right, Welscott knocked the ball away.
A jubilant Goshen sideline was muffled only due to Janzen’s try.

It was good as well.

Cornerstone made its second attempt, Felton notched his, and Cornerstone made its third. With senior Adam Yoder up, the Golden Eagles’ Grube made a tremendous guess. His dive stopped Yoder’s shot dead in its tracks.

It didn’t matter to Welscott.

Facing the Golden Eagles’ fourth shooter, Welscott began to dive to his right but somehow realized the ball was coming off to the left. Changing his momentum just enough, Welscott fully extended to get a hand on the shot. It continued rolling forward, grazed the post, and harmlessly went outside it.

“Dutch has made some big, big saves for us both this year and throughout his career, but that may have been the biggest ever,” Mounsithiraj said. “I knew Dutch was great, but that save surprised even me. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

Neither could Woodworth.

With a trip to nationals riding on his right foot, Woodworth took a deep breath.

It wasn’t close.

Grube dove in the exact opposite direction of Woodworth’s shot, and the celebration was on before the ball hit the net. As fans stormed the field, Mounsithiraj ran around frantically.

Goshen was going to the NAIA National Championships.

“It’s not like we recruit to go to nationals,” Mounsithiraj said. “We’ve just recruited players that we thought would help us be competitive in our conference. Things have just kind of lined up for us this year. We’re now going to try to represent our conference as best we can, and we want to prove that we belong with the best in the country. We haven’t been ranked in the (NAIA) Top 25 all year, and we want to show people that we can play.”

The NAIA National Championships are held at Embry Riddle University in Daytona Beach, Florida. Tournament brackets were released early Sunday morning. Goshen was seeded 19th in the 20-team field, and will face 14th-seed Park University (Parkville, MO) on Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. Complete tournament brackets, real-time stats and tournament updates can be viewed at the official NAIA website by clicking here. The NAIA, in a partnership with XOS Technologies, will be broadcasting a live streaming video feed of each national tournament contest over the web for a fee. To learn more about the tournament video package, click here.

This website will be updated live from Daytona Beach shortly following Goshen’s match(es).

For additional information regarding Goshen’s advancement to the NAIA National Tournament, or for media credentials, contact Sports Information Director Cory Furman at (574) 535-7497 or click here to send him an email.