Roadrunners’ Season Ends in Penalty Kicks

The fourth seeded State Fair Community College (SFCC) Roadrunners saw their soccer season come to an end in heartbreaking fashion on Saturday, Oct.20 after losing to St. Charles Community College on penalty kicks 11-10.

The match remained a scoreless tie at the end of 120 minutes before the Roadrunners lost by one kick. The match was part of the Region 16 Men's Soccer Tournament.

"We dominated in every aspect but the scoreboard," said SFCC Soccer Head Coach. "Hopefully, our guys will learn a lesson that when you have opportunities to score in front of you, you have to capitalize. You can't leave it up to chance. I don't like penalty kicks, but we did it to ourselves because we didn't score earlier."

SFCC (5-6-4) had two opportunities to score with about 34 minutes remaining in the opening half, but the St. Charles goalkeeper turned them away. It would be the theme of the entire match. Both teams had opportunities to find the back of the net in regulation and overtime, but neither could finish.

SFCC registered 25 shots, 11 of them were on goal. Sophomore goalkeeper Juan Jurkevicius got the start in goal in what would prove to be his final game at SFCC. He made three saves in the match, made some clutch stops during the penalty kicks and even made a penalty kick of his own.

Beltran was proud of the effort from his team as a whole, even though they are small in numbers, he was especially proud of the effort from his sophomore class.

"They came here with me," said Beltran. "There are some important pieces that will be really hard to replace in our sophomore class. The thing about this group is that they were recruited for a reason. We brought good people into our program and as much as we will miss them on the field as players, I'm super excited to see the men that they will become. They are good soccer players, but they are even better people."

--David Rohrbach, SFCC Athletics