Box Score NORTHFIELD, Vt. – The Norwich University men's soccer team finished off an unbeaten 2013 regular season at home with a 4-0 victory over Rivier University on Friday night on Sabine Field at Haynes Family Stadium.
Norwich (9-3-3, 4-1-2) stretched its unbeaten streak to five straight games and improved their impressive home field record to 7-0-1 on the season with the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) victory.
Junior midfielders Ryan Curley (East Haddam, Conn.) and Chris Bristol (Clinton, Conn.) paced the offense with Curley tallying a goal and an assist, while Bristol chipped in with two assists Bristol now has 22 career assists, leaving him seven short of the program all-time record.
Norwich opened the scoring in the 17th minute when senior team captain Ryan Campbell (Damascus, Md.) headed home his second goal of the season off a throw in from Bristol. The goal was Campbell's 10th of his standout career that has seen play and start in all 76 games NU has played the last four seasons.
Despite heavily outshooting Rivier 9-2, Norwich was only able to muster one goal before the halftime break.
The Cadets weren't able to break the game open until the last 20 minutes of the match when they poured in three goals in a span of 15 minutes to get some breathing room before the final horn.
Curley opened the scoring spurt in the 71st minute by heading a corner kick from Bristol over the outstretched hand of Rivier goalkeeper Gary Archambault for his first goal of the season.
Less than seven minutes later Curley played a through ball that split a pair of Rivier defenders and then Amell chased the ball down, beating Archambault to the ball after the Rivier keeper came off his line and chipped it over him to make it 3-0 Cadets.
Freshman midfielder Moab Schiers (South Weber, Utah) capped the scoring in the 86th minute by finishing off a scramble in front of the net after Eric Weir (Ipswich, Mass.) had a shot blocked by the Rivier defense.
Norwich outshot Rivier 22-4 for the game with junior goalkeeper Christian Hallstrom (Las Vegas, Nev.) picking up the clean sheet victory by making two saves and improving to 4-2-1 on the year. Archambault was saddled with the loss for Rivier after making three saves.
The Norwich senior class improved to a remarkable 27-5-3 in home matches during their four years at NU.
The Cadets will close out the regular season with two road GNAC matchups at Anna Maria on Wednesday, Oct. 23 and at Mount Ida on Saturday, Oct. 26.
Norwich currently sits in second place in the GNAC standings with 14 points. However, the Cadets have a game in hand on Lasell (13 points) and Johnson & Wales (11 points). Mount Ida also has 13 points and has played seven league games as well.
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