HAVERFORD, Pa. - In the final regular season game of the season, the Haverford College men's soccer team fell, 4-2, to the sixth-ranked Garnet from Swarthmore College Saturday afternoon in Centennial Conference action.
The contest was the final collegiate game for three Haverford seniors -- Chris Dioguardi, Brian Pepe-Mooney and Jeff Rickert -- who played their last contest on Walton Field and were honored with a brief pre-game ceremony.
Swarthmore (14-1-2, 6-1-2 CC) jumped ahead to a 2-0 lead in the first 20 minutes but the Fords (6-11, 1-8 CC) cut the lead in half just before the intermission.
A Garnet foul in the right corner resulted in a long cross that hung in the air where Swarthmore goalie Zachary Weimar was able to leap and punch the ball up field. Haverford's Fernando Gracia was in the right place at the right time and one-timed the ball in the air into the back of the net from the top of the box.
The Fords searched for the equalizer early in the second half but Swarthmore's Gage Newman headed a free kick into the box into the upper left side of the goal to stretch the visitors' lead back to two.
Twelve minutes later Newman struck again, this time knocking in a ball off a corner kick, to make the score 4-1 in favor of the Garnet.
A chippy game -- seven yellow cards, four on the visitors and three called on the Fords -- turned even more so in the 67th minute when Swarthmore's Arsean Maqami was red-carded for an elbow to the head of a Haverford player which put the Fords up a man for the remainder of the game.
The visitors held tight for a long while until Dioguardi tapped in a perfect left to right cross from teammate Scott Cohen to bring Haverford within two at the 83:05 mark.
Though they generated a few more scoring chances in the final seven minutes, the Fords weren't able to complete the rally as Swarthmore won the game and picked up their first point in the Hood Trophy challenge between the two schools (led so far in 2009 by the Fords with a 5-1 score following wins over Swarthmore in women's soccer, field hockey, volleyball, and both men's and women's cross country).
Jamey Applegate finished with five saves between the pipes for Haverford while Weimer earned the win for the Garnet with a pair of saves. David D'Annunzio played the final 24:44 in goal for the visitors and gave up one goal while registering four saves.
The Saturday game closes out the initial season for head coach Bill Brady who led his first Haverford team to a win total that doubled the previous year's three wins and was the most since the team won seven games in 2003.