BROWNWOOD, Texas -- The LeTourneau men's soccer team shut out Howard Payne in a 1-0 road victory on Saturday night at Citizens National Bank Field. 

The shut out effort moves LeTourneau to 1-2-3 on the campaign, while Howard Payne drops to 0-6-2 on the season. 

After much of the match was dominated by the defenses, Sammy Shmorgun finally broke through scoring the game winning goal for the YellowJackets in the 81st minute. This second goal of the year for Shmorgun came on a heads up play, in which he capitalized on an attempted clearance by the Howard Payne goalie Adrian Villa that did not make it out of the box. Villa's clearance landed directly at the feet of Shmorgun who aggressively fired the ball off of his right foot, and into the back of the net. 

Octavio Jacquez made his first start of the season for LeTourneau, made one save, and tallied his first career shutout. 

Jaron Wilkerson, Zach Parris, and Shomrgun logged the majority of the minutes for the back line, and played tremendously holding Howard Payne to just one shot on frame. 

A key piece of the defensive dominance displayed by LeTourneau was the amount of time the were able to keep the ball in the offensive zone. LeTourneau logged 17 shots in the match compared to just three attempted by Howard Payne. 

Patrick Bauer took three shots. Caleb Nelson, Bridge Mwambukiri, Leandro Ferreira, and Graysen Crawford all tallied two shots. Karsten Guerra, Marcos Gonzalez, and Wilkerson all fired one shot. Elias Arreguin ripped a shot on frame.

Along with being the first win of the season for the YellowJackets, it also marks the first career win for Head Coach TJ Milby, in what will inevitably be the first of many. 

UP NEXT

LeTourneau returns home to open SCAC action against Concordia (TX) next Friday at 7:30 p.m.

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