An 83rd minute red card and an 85th minute goal resulted in the UW-Whitewater men’s soccer team’s 3-2 defeat against UW-Platteville in the Shaymus Guinn Cup Oct. 29 in the Warhawks season finale in Platteville, Wisconsin.
“I don’t think we lacked efforts by any means,” head coach Tony Guinn said.
After a 2-1 Warhawk victory in last year’s matchup, the Pioneers claimed the Shaymus Guinn Cup. The cup is a tribute to Guinn’s son, Shaymus, who died in 2012 after an ongoing battle against Ewing Sarcoma and chemo-induced acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Junior forward Peter Raymonds scored the first goal of the game and his 12th of the season off an assist from twin brother and junior forward Henry Raymonds in the 26th minute.
The Pioneers scored the next two goals, but the Warhawks equalized in the 81st minute off a goal from sophomore defender Garrett Morgando.
Sophomore defender Yoshihiko Fukushima picked up a red card for UW-W in the 83rd minute, and the Pioneers capitalized with a score just two minutes later to seal the game.
Senior goalkeeper Chris Lucatorto finished the game with three saves. He ended his season with a 76.9 save percentage, a far cry from last season’s 83.0 save percentage.
The Warhawks finished the regular season 10-6-4 and await the selections of the 62 teams that will be included in the NCAA Division III Championship.  With the loss to the Pioneers, a team that UW-W’s competes with for an independent bid, the chances of a tournament berth seem out of reach.
“Most teams in the country would be pretty happy to be 10-6-4,” Guinn said. “But that’s not good enough for Whitewater standards by any means. I got to do a better job recruiting and finding players that can handle the pressures that they’re put under when you play at Whitewater. I got to find people who will listen to what we tell them to do. That was the biggest problem in that game [UW-Platteville], we would have won that game if players would have listened.”
Through the first four games of the Warhawks season the team started 3-1 and had a goal margin of plus 11. In the next four games however, the team went without a single win, earning two defeats and two ties.
It looked like UW-W regained life towards the middle of the season. The team went undefeated (5-0-2) in their next seven to put them at 8-3-4. However, the team finished up the season just 2-3-0.
Although just two seniors will graduate for the Warhawks, Lucatorto and defender Jeremy Cohen, the team will be much different next season.
“Next year we will have a lot of new players on our team,” Guinn said.
Along with the incoming freshman class, the Warhawks will get several players back next year who were out with injury or were away from the team for other reasons.