WILMINGTON — The Wilmington College men’s soccer team opens the 2021 fall season with the Quaker Bowl Rivalry match at Earlham College 4 p.m. Wednesday. Kickoff from Matlack-Messer Field is set for 4 p.m.
Wilmington finished the unique 2021 spring season with a 7-3-1 record, won an OAC tournament home match for the first time in more than a decade and came a shootout away from playing for the tournament championship.
Earlham finished the 2021 spring season with a 2-8-0 mark.
On the local front, Brady Vilvens, a top scorer at Wilmington High School, is a freshman for the Quakers.
Overall, the WC roster is a mixed bag of athletes from all over. They have players from Utah, Sweden, Switzerland, Long Island, N.Y., Saskatchewan and England
Alex Van der Sluijs is in his fourth year leading Wilmington’s men’s soccer team. The 2007 WC graduate, who was a three-time first team All-OAC selection and a member of the program’s only team to win an OAC title in 2004, got the program within a shootout victory of playing for an OAC tournament title in the spring of 2021. He worked at Defiance College for seven seasons.
Wilmington graduated two key seniors on offense, but returns the OAC’s Offensive Player of the Year in Elorm Dogbey. The senior scored five goals and dished out four assists for a total of 14 points in the abbreviated 10-game season. Yusef Muqtadir, who netted four goals, and Brady Shapiro, an All-OAC selection on defense who contributed four assists, both return.
Wilmington will host the Kiwanis Classic at home over the weekend – facing Mount St. Joseph University on Friday and Manchester University on Sunday.
