In the second game of Patriot League play, the Colgate men’s soccer team proved its worth annihilating Lehigh in a 5-0 win at Van Doren field on Saturday.

The Colgate defense shut down Le-high, which allowed for the Colgate of-fense to maintain control of the game. The defense, led by senior captain Patrick Le-tourneau, frustrated the Mountain Hawks, allowing them only two shots on goal, both of which were saved by sophomore goalkeeper Liam Stapleton.

Contesting Lehigh’s offense provided the Raiders with more offensive opportu-nities. This contributed to an effective of-fensive output, which it had seemed to be lacking in recent games.

Head Coach Erik Ronning seemed to agree that the Raider defense pro-vided the offense with more fire-power and intensity. “I think our attack fed off of our defense,” he said.

The offense, led by seniors Mike Re-idy and Shane Conlin, secured control of the game with it’s flawless execution in the box. Conlin gave the team many scoring opportunities with his effective pass distribution.

He connected with various play-ers allowing them to finish and score. Since the beginning of the game, Colgate’s offense baffled the Le-high defense and took advantage of scoring opportunities.

In the 18th minute of the first half, senior captain Mike Garzi passed to the ball to Reidy, allowing him to elude the Lehigh defenders and fire a shot past ju-nior goalkeeper Ciaran Nugent giving Colgate a 1-0 lead.

About a minute after Reidy’s elec-tric goal, junior Barrett Metzger played a flawless corner kick allowing sopho-more Evan Heroux to ferociously head the ball past Nugent earning his first ever collegiate goal extending Colgate’s lead to 2-0.

Colgate remained in control for the rest of the first half. With a two-nil lead going into the second half, the team re-mained as focused and determined as it had been in the first half. The Col-gate defense continued to frustrate the Mountain Hawks allowing for the Raid-er offense to continue pulverizing the Lehigh defense.

Lehigh’s frustrations became evident as its players became increasingly physi-cal throughout the second half. Howev-er, Lehigh’s physical play didn’t faze the Raider offense as it continued its barrage of attacks.

In the 56th minute, Reidy passed the ball off to Garzi who weaved through the seemingly perplexed Lehigh defense and successfully launched another Colgate goal giving the Raiders a 3-0 lead.

A short minute later, Conlin’s consis-tently sharp offensive play allowed Reidy yet another chance to score giving the Raiders a solid 4-0 advantage.

“[Reidy] is one of the more talented players in the league,” Coach Ronning said.

Later, Conlin was able to score in the 70th minute off of a penalty kick giving Colgate a dominant 5-0 lead. Colgate’s defense remained steadfast in shutting down the starved Lehigh offense for the rest of the game.

Up next is an away game against Hart-wick College at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday. The Raiders will be back home at Van Doren Field on Saturday when they face Holy Cross at 4:00 p.m..

Contact Matt Washuta at [email protected].