October 22, 2022- TORONTO - The Niagara College Men's soccer team saw their season come to an end tonight in Toronto with a 2-1 loss against the George Brown Huskies in their crossover match. The Huskies will move on to the 2022 Men's Soccer OCAA Championship hosted by Humber College Oct 27-29th.
In a bizarre series of events that saw the Knights land their OCAA crossover game against the Huskies, the Knights found themselves up against the third place Huskies after initially slated to play St. Lawrence College earlier this week. A shake up in the East Division standings due to several teams declaring ineligible players from the regular season, the final standings shuffled. The Knights found themselves in a similar situation just one week earlier, when Sheridan College declared an ineligible player, bumping the Knights up to a 3-7 record to finish 6th and inside the playoff bracket.
Things went south for the Knights early when Simon Silverio was ejected 22 minutes in on a red card for dangerous play, leaving the Knights short-handed for the remainder of the game. The Huskies were awarded a penalty kick which resulted in a goal to go up 1-0 over Niagara. The Huskies were again awarded a penalty kick to get up to a 2-0 lead in the first half before Niagara's Isaac DeWaard got the Knights on the board to cut the Huskies lead in half to end the first 45 minutes of play.
Head coach Frank DeChellis was emotional after the loss. " Losing 2-1 to the province's no. 4 team on two penalty kicks just hurts."
"We got a little emotional when Simon was dismissed. Watching the video later, the call was wrong, but the ref does not have the benefit of rewatching a video 10 times and in slow motion," said DeChellis.
Despite the heartbreaking end to the season, DeChellis points out there was much to be gained from this season, including tonight's game.
"What I saw our guys do with 10 players blew me away. This week we only made two tactical changes and focused on reinforcing principles and philosophies and the guys brought that to tonight's match and did it short a player for 70 minutes"
Knights keeper Vinson Notarianni played brilliantly for the blue and white, facing 27 shots from the Huskies, with their two goals coming solely from PKs. Niagara struggled to get shots off on the George Brown keeper, mustering up just three shots on goal.
"Vinny's performance was top level tonight. Every player on both teams acknowledged his performance after the match," said DeChellis. He was fearless, very technical and made great decisions all night. As the year progressed his composure was more and more evident. He should be proud of his progress."
