The Riverland men’s soccer team suffered its first loss of the season when it fell 2-1 at the University of St. Mary’s in Winona Friday.

“Today we played against a very good team who played with discipline. They were tall, athletic, and made good long passes,” RCC head coach Soner Dogan said. “On the other hand, I thought my players played well too, although we could have played better. My players showed that we could play against any four year university team at their level.”

RCC’s Corey Anderson scored the first goal of the match when he found the ball in the USM zone off a corner kick and fired it in.

USM, a four-year university, tied the match on a long ball where the Blue Devil defense miscommunicated.

USM took the lead for good 30 seconds into the half when a striker stole the ball from an RCC defender and scored.

Riverland (7-1 overall) had two good scoring chances in the last 10 minutes, but Sam Scheffeler had a header stopped on a save and Dante Ortiz just missed a header from Ronaldo Rubio with three seconds left in the match.

“When Dante headed the ball every Blue Devils players thought it was in but ball went out just about six inches wide,” Dogan said.