The Lakeland men's soccer team traveled to Livonia, MI over the weekend and suffered their first loss of the season - a 2-1 OT match to the Schoolcraft College Ocelots. Lakeland jumped out to a 1-0 lead at the 16 minute mark when Amir Serikbaev (Willoughby South) made a nice diagonal pass that Omani Leacock (Lester Vaughan School) picked up. Leacock then dribbled around a defender and beat netminder Josh Pierce for the initial lead. Unfortunately, that lead would not hold as Schoolcraft's Nick Lema would beat Laker netminder Dominic Grobler (Bishop Bavin School) 6 minutes later to knot the score at 1 apiece. The score remained tied throughout the rest of regulation as neither team could convert on their opportunities. In the 9th minute of overtime, the Ocelot's Teo Espinosa beat Grobbler for the game winner. The Lakers were outshot 20-10 and 8-3 on net. Grobbler finished with 8 saves for the Lakers.

Kettani's Comments: "This was a tough loss; but the team fought hard in this match. We need to clean up our play and get back to work so that this doesn't happen again." 

Next up: The Lakers will play a home and home series with Ancilla College this weekend. Lakeland will play host to the Chargers at 4pm on Friday before traveling to Donaldson, IN on Sunday for a 2pm matchup.