It turns out Mother Nature could not afford to cede 90 entire minutes of her Saturday to watch Marquette men’s soccer’s matinee against Providence.
After 74, she decided she had better things to attend to.
Perhaps Heat Miser and Snow Miser were acting up again, so she had to handle that. Perhaps she remembered she had a pressing matter to take care of. Perhaps she called an audible and decided she simply had better things to do.
Whatever the reason, she made the call.
And in came the thunder and lightning, hovering over the Valley and clouding not only the fields, but the Golden Eagles’ chances at keeping their undefeated home record intact.
The home field advantage that made all of Marquette’s losses up this point come outside of Milwaukee disappeared alongside the sun, and Providence marched to an early 1-0 victory — courtesy of two NCAA rules: one that says any match stopped after 70 minutes can be finalized, and another that forbids a match from continuing after its original start time eclipses three hours.
Marquette’s (6-5-2, 2-2) offense started hot with the first two shots of the game — within seconds of each other — by graduate forward Tim Smith followed by senior forward Kareem Abdul Pare.
From there, the first half would be an offensive struggle for the Golden Eagles. They would be outshot 5-4, putting only half of those shots on goal, and only take one corner.
It all bubbled into and then out of the locker room as less than one minute into the second half, a shot by Providence graduate forward Aidan Davock soared high over first-year goalkeeper Marten Brink’s head and into the back of the net.
Minutes after that, Mother Nature sent in the lighting and went out and ran some errands for an hour and a half.
She came back, though, and the game resumed with Marquette fighting to keep its squeaky clean home record squeaky clean.
The Golden Eagles outshot the Friars 5-2 in the second and were vying for their equalizer when Great Mother unplugged the match’s defibrillator for good, sent in more lightning, and the time of death was marked at 74 minutes.
It sent both teams off for the third time in the match, and Marquette had to settle for a rare too-little-but-only-in-this-weird-circumstance-too-late defeat — its first at home this season.
The Golden Eagles will now hit the road to Xavier Saturday at 6 p.m. CST.
Hopefully, Mother Nature’s schedule will free up by then so there can be a full 90 minutes of soccer.
This article was written by Sofie Hanrahan. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @SofieHanrahanMU.
