Antigonish, NS – The last time the STFX X-Men played an interuniversity game was Nov. 8, 2019 at the U SPORTS championship in Montreal. After a long 783-day wait, and many new faces suiting up, they finally hit the pitch again this week in pre-season exhibition action, playing to a pair of victories.
Wednesday evening in Halifax the X-Men easily handled King's College of the CCAA conference by a 9-0 margin.
Goal scorers for the blue and white were Carson Ripoll with a trio of goals, Logan Rieck with two and single markers from Ziad Abdelerahman, Kyle Cordeiro, and veterans Nic Aquino and Blake Fenton. Will Venoit and Oliver Vossen shared the shutout vicotry tending the X net.
On home turf at STFX Stadium Thursday afternoon the X-Men defeated the UPEI Panthers 4-0 in a wet and windy affair.
"Putting the poor playing conditions aside, this game against a very well coached and organized UPEI team provided a great opportunity for our X-Men to show us what they've got and to put everything we've been working on in training into action," noted assistant coach Oliver Hewish.
"Our young players stepped up and our more experienced X-Men really lead by example in today's match," he continued. "We had some very strong showings from all areas of the pitch but also some lessons learned about our team that will help us focus our preparation for our final week leading into the start of the AUS season."
The X-Men held a 3-1 lead in the game after the opening half of play thanks to goals by Lewis Dye and Carson Ripoll in the 7th and 12th minutes of play, and a late half goal 39 minutes in from Blake Fenton.
Kyle Cordeiro rounded out the scoring at the end of the game for X at the 90 minute mark to close out the win for the home squad, while Seamus MacDonald and Jae Jeon shared netminding duties for the shutout.
The X-Men will close out their pre-season training camp in the coming days, along with playing one final pre-season match. They'll head to Sydney to take on the Cape Breton Capers on Saturday afternoon, then will prepare for their first AUS regular season game on Friday, September 10th. Their opponent will again be the UPEI Panthers but this time on the road in Charlottetown for a 7:15 pm kick-off.
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Courtesy Krista McKenna, STFX Sports Information