The NC State men’s soccer team took down UNC Asheville 4-0 behind a trio of goals from its freshmen on Monday, Aug. 30.
The Wolfpack (2-0) was dominant throughout, outshooting the Bulldogs (1-1) 19 to 6 across the 90 and controlling the tempo of the game.
“It was a good, solid performance out of the team,” said head coach George Kiefer. “I liked the intangibles. When we score a goal and the whole bench is celebrating that. … The consistent thing about the team is the toughness, the competitiveness, the NC State-like people we are. That I love. … There’s a lot of good things, but some things we can still work on.”
Scoring his second career goal in just his third career game, freshman midfielder Luke Hille opened the scoring for the Pack. The NCFC Academy product put in some good hustle to win a 50/50 ball against the defender before breaking into the box. Hille’s first shot was blocked by a defender, but he made the rebound count.
Just under 10 minutes later, freshman forward Henrique Santos doubled the Pack’s lead. Asheville’s keeper attempted to clear the ball, but it only made it as far as freshman defender Will Buete, who headed it down to Santos. Santos received the ball and cut in before placing it perfectly in the bottom corner.
The Wolfpack poured on the chances in the second half, but the Bulldogs were able to hold fast until the 80th. Hille eventually broke the second-half deadlock with his second goal of the game, and third goal of his college career.
Having played for the NCFC u23s and trained with the NCFC first team all summer, Hille has been able to hit the ground running in his freshman season.
“Playing games in general with the u23s kept the fitness going, kept the right attitude and kept me in between the lines, obviously it’s about getting better every day,” Hille said. “Then playing on top of that with the professional team. Being in a pro environment, it totally changed my lifestyle and the way I take on the game. These guys do it for a living, and hopefully that’s what I want to do one day as well, so I learned every day from them. They took me under their wing and taught me a lot of things so it couldn’t be better than that.”
Hille’s second goal opened the floodgates a bit with senior midfielder Aidan Foster making it 4-0 just three minutes later.
“What I like about the last two goals: they were team goals,” Kiefer said. “Seven, 10, maybe even 20 passes. …We do a ton of training for that.”
With Hille scoring twice, Foster scoring once and Buete picking up the assist on Santos’ goal, an NCFC Academy product had a hand in each of NC State’s four goals. Buete was one of the 15 academy players signed by NCFC prior to the start of the USL League One Season and while Foster is a few years removed from his time with NCFC, he has also previously played for the u23s.
In the 87th minute, redshirt senior goalie Leon Krapf came up with a big save on a late penalty to preserve the shutout. He ended the game with three saves.
“I just wanted to get a shutout, obviously, but if you look at it, there wasn’t really that much pressure left,” Krapf said. “I tried to stay calm and I think that’s always a good attitude. Just focus on what you can control and don’t worry about the things I can not control.”
With the win, the Pack improved to 2-0 on the season, a stark contrast from its winless fall in 2020.
“Growth happens outside of your comfort zone,” Krapf said. “We were outside of our comfort zone last season, and we went through some difficult times, but we kept together and reflected on what went wrong. We tried to fix the things that went wrong and now we’re back and we learned from that and that made us better. I’m looking forward to the rest of the season because I still think this team has a lot of potential to get even better.”
The Pack will stay in Raleigh for the George Tarantini Classic, which consists of two games. The first game will be against Seton Hall on Sept. 3, and the second game will be against UCF on Sept. 6.
