The David Lilly era has officially begun for the ETSU men’s soccer team. On Aug. 25, the Bucs had their home opener against the Longwood Lancers. The Bucs defended their own turf by beating the Lancers in a shutout, 4-0.
Lilly spent eight seasons (2010-2017) as an assistant coach for ETSU, and for the past four seasons has been the head coach for Milligan University. The Scotland native is a proven winner both as a player and a head coach.
ETSU’s captain Tarik Pannholzer (Flensburg, Germany) scored the first goal for the new campaign. Pannholzer is a team-first kind of player, but has high goals for himself this season, and for good reason. Last season, he scored 10 goals, the second-most in ETSU single-season history. The current record is 11 goals.
“I will try to go for 12, everything above 11 goals, that’s my personal goal,” Pannholzer said. “The first goal is to have a winning record, we want Summers-Taylor to be a castle and we don’t want to lose at home, then eventually winning the Sothern Conference.”
Junior midfielder Gabriel Ramos (Sao Paulo, Brazil) scored in minute 34, pushing the Bucs up 2-0 going into the second half.
In only the first minute into the second half, senior forward Kieran Richards (Hamilton, New Zealand) scored his first goal of the night to put the Bucs up 3-0. Carlos Portas (Barcelona, Spain) was in on the play as he recorded his first assist of the season.
Pannholzer, a junior, knows the importance of staying focused throughout the course of a game, even with a big lead.
“We spoke about game management a lot recently as a team. Of course it’s easy when you are up three-nil to loosen up a little bit and take a step back, but coach expects us to manage the game well and don’t let the opponent back in the game,” Pannholzer said.
In the closing minutes of the match, Richards recorded his second goal of the night, completing the brace and leading the blue and gold to their first win of the young season.
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