The Dominican University men's soccer team came up on the short side of a high-scoring, 3-2, affair with the #21 North Park University Vikings on Sunday evening in Chicago.  After the Vikings opened leads of 1-0 and 2-1, the Stars answered back but ran out of time after North Park notched the game-winner 81^st minute of play.
 
"While I'm disappointed in the score, I'm not with the team," said Erick Baumann, the Stars' head men's soccer coach. "We went out again today and executed our game plan and competed hard for 90 minutes against a good opponent. The match could have went either way—unfortunately it did not go our way."
 
The Vikings opened the scoring in the eighth minute of play, capitalizing on a throw-in deep in the attacking third when Patrick Knap flicked a shot over Dominican's Daniel Dominguez for the game's opening tally.
 
The Stars answered in the 24^th minute when Nicolo Vitale cleared a ball from Dominican's defensive half of the field all the way forward to a streaking Isaac Perez who was able to beat the North Park goalkeeper with a low shot after Mathias Stulen raced off his line to try to beat Perez to the ball.
 
The Vikings regained the lead just before half. After Dominguez raced off his line to knock a 50-50 ball away from a North Park striker, the Vikings regained possession and found a way to beat Dominguez with less than twenty seconds to play in the half for the 2-1 halftime lead.
 
Dominican pressed forward early in the second half, netting the equalizer in the 54^th minute when Jonathan Hernandez found the back of the goal for the third time this season.  The play started with restart service from midfield by Giovannie Ortiz that was flicked into the box by Jesus Lopez.  The Vikings had two attempts to clear but the second was blocked by Hernandez, settled to his feet for a right-footed missile to the far post upper-90.
 
The match stayed dead-even at 2-2 all the way to the 81^st minute when a Dominican foul just outside the 18-yard box setup a free kick for the Vikings from 19 yards out that was buried over the wall to the left post by Peder Olsen.
 
The Vikings did hold a 14-7 advantage in shots but the Stars allowed just five of those shots on goal, forcing the Viking attack to settle for shots from distance.
 
Both Dominguez and North Park's Stulen made two saves apiece and corner kicks were even, 2-2.
 
The loss drops the Stars to 2-1-1 on the season with another busy weekend on the horizon with the Stars traveling down to St. Louis next Friday to take on the Washington University-St. Louis Bears on Friday night before closing out the weekend road trip at Fontbonne University on Sunday afternoon.
 
"We made a few mistakes today that led to their goals," said Baumann. "We are going to need to clean those up to allow us to compete with the quality opponents we have on our schedule."