The Raiders competed against Lafayette on Senior Day at Van Doren Field on Saturday. The team dedicated the day to ovarian cancer awareness as part of the festivities surrounding Senior Day.

However, Colgate struggled to match Lafayette in the opening minutes of the game. The Leopards’ mighty offense led to a quick lead in the first half.

Early in the game, the Leopards were able to main-tain possession and find opportunities to score. An early Colgate foul led to a free kick allowing Lafayette first-year Nate Arronson to fire a shot, which was deflected by the Raider senior defender Patrick Letourneau.

Lafayette senior Kyle Scharfenberg recovered from this setback, securing possession of the deflected ball and launch-ing a shot, giving Lafayette a 1-0 lead just two minutes into the game.

The Raiders responded quickly and secured posses-sion of the ball for the majority of the remainder of the first half. Colgate senior Mike Reidy again led the Colgate offense using his sharp footwork to provide the team with the spark it needed to rebound from the early deficit.Reidy shattered the Lafayette defense and fired a pass near the goal. First-year Tyler Forbes took advantage of Reidy’s pass and swiftly launched a shot past Lafayette junior goalie Nathan McDonald tying the game 1-1. The shot was Forbes’ first collegiate goal.

Reidy’s efforts helped Colgate continue its offensive on-slaught. Late in the first half, Reidy was able to find an-other offensive opportunity crossing the ball to the mid-dle of the box. As the ball soared through the air, Forbes leapt and headed the ball into the corner of the goal giving Colgate a 2-1 lead. Forbes continued Colgate’s offen-sive momentum in the second half.

Early on in the half, Colgate sophomore Tanner Schil-ling crossed the ball to Forbes who then fired a shot but McDonald deflected it. Colgate was unable to take ad-vantage of the rebound, as McDonald was able to regain possession quickly.

Soon after this, the Leopards were able to secure posses-sion of the ball. Lafayette junior Brandon Turner took ad-vantage of a strong throw in by one of his teammates and headed the ball into the goal tying the game 2-2.

Colgate responded with several strong scoring op-portunities. However, the Lafayette defense shut down any Raider chance at reclaiming the lead for the remain-der of the second half. The Raider defense effectively shut down Lafayette attempts to score as well, sending the game into overtime.

Colgate dominated the ball when overtime play commenced and took advantage of several scoring opportunities. One of the Raiders’ best and most exciting chances on goal occurred when Colgate junior Barrett Metzger fired the ball to junior James Byer who then launched it to the middle. Reidy saw an opportunity to score and attempted to head it but was unable to position himself strongly enough to cleanly head it into the goal. Lafayette junior Alec Golini was able to gain possession of the ball and had a wide-open shot on goal. But Reed was de-termined to keep Colgate alive and was able to deflect the shot.

Reed’s deflection allowed for the game to remain tied and sent it to the second overtime. With tensions mount-ing, both squads were anxious to pull out all the stops. Shortly into the second overtime, the Raiders earned a free kick when Byer was fouled in trying to secure a shot. Reidy fired the free kick towards the goal but it just missed the goal hitting the crossbar instead.

The two teams fought during the second over-time for more scoring opportunities. Colgate contin-ued to dominate the offensive end with a few more of-fensive opportunities, but the Lafayette defense shut down the remaining chances causing the game to end in a 2-2 tie.

The tie puts the Raiders in second place in the Patriot League behind American. The Raid-ers will look to continue their dominant offense away at Bucknell on Saturday.

Contact Matt Washuta at [email protected].