McMINNVILLE, Ore.  – There are very good reasons why every team plays a handful of non-conference games to open the season. The NCU men's soccer team witness one of those reasons coming to the forefront on Tuesday: Get the bad performance out of the way before the conference schedule begins.
 
NCU had their worst performance of the young season, falling to Linfield College 7-1 behind a 15-3 discrepancy in shots-on-goal. Despite answering a quick score with one of their own in the first ten minutes, the Beacons found themselves trailing 3-1 after the first 34 minutes and it was all but over from that point on.
 
Head Coach Benny Flores said, "If you play soccer long enough you are going to have games like tonight. Linfield came out and put us under tremendous pressure and we did not handle it very well."
 
Linfield got on the board in the 5th minute when Forward Moi Diaz got past the Beacon back line and beat the NCU keeper one-on-one for the score. It was a theme that would continue for most of the evening.
 
NCU responded in the 10th minute as Isaiah Blake posted the equalizer with an impressive goal from the left side as he too went 1v1 with the Linfield keeper.
 
Linfield added two more goals in the first half to take the 3-1 lead into the intermission. Then, within 16 minutes of the second half kicking off, Diaz owned a hat trick, scoring two more times as he beat the defensive line on both occasions. The Wildcats went on to tack on two more scores over the final 28 minutes.
 
"Our goal as a team," said Flores, "is to learn from this experience and in the long run it will make us a better team."
 
The Beacons have a ten-day layoff until their next contest, playing host to Simpson University (0-1) on September 11.