Behind historic performances by two former high school teammates, the Muhlenberg men's soccer team defeated Swarthmore, 4-2, in the first round of the Centennial Conference playoffs.
The sixth-seeded Mules (7-7-3), who advanced to the CC semifinals for the fifth straight year, will travel to top-seeded Johns Hopkins for a semifinal match on Friday night. Muhlenberg handed Johns Hopkins its lone CC loss of the season.
Graduate student
Sim Dorsey scored the Mules' first three goals, all off long throws from fellow grad student and Conestoga High School alum
Lorenzo Vargas-Clarke.
The hat trick was only the second in CC playoff history and the first for the Mules since 2023. It also was only the second hat trick in a Muhlenberg men's soccer postseason history that includes 94 games. The only other one was scored by Tim Averell in a 1995 NCAA quarterfinal win vs. Ithaca.
Vargas-Clarke became the first Mule with three assists in a game since 2019 and is believed to be the first ever to record three assists in a postseason game.
Muhlenberg wasted little time getting on the board, with Dorsey netting his first goal just 4:40 after the opening whistle - the earliest postseason goal for the Mules since 2014.
Swarthmore (7-8-3) wasted even less time evening the score, finding the back of the net just 96 seconds later.
The score remained 1-1 until Vargas-Clarke and Dorsey teamed up twice more in a span of 4:03. Dorsey's second goal was Sim-ilar to the first one, while the third one came from the opposite side of the field.
The Garnet, which led the CC in goals scored in league play, put intense pressure on the Mules throughout the second half, taking 19 shots after the break and forcing sophomore
Nico Famularo to make some tough saves. Swarthmore finally broke through with 30:37 remaining, cutting the lead to 3-2.
Muhlenberg regained some breathing room with less than 15 minutes to go on another play that started with a Vargas-Clarke throw that was deflected out of bounds by a Swarthmore player. On the ensuing corner kick, junior
Thomas Shreiber headed in the service from senior
Gabe Blikshteyn for his fourth goal of the season.
The four goals tied the school record for a CC playoff game. The only time the Mules scored more in a conference postseason game was in 1975, when they won 5-2 in overtime against Gettysburg in a Middle Atlantic Conference tiebreaker game.
Dorsey narrowly missed Muhlenberg's first four-goal game since 1997, one-timing a rocket shot in the second half that the Garnet goalie had to jump to save.
Famularo
(pictured above) finished with 8 saves, one off his career high.
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