Malone Soccer players win the Northern Ohio Soccer League Championship

Founded in 2017, the Northern Ohio Soccer League (NOSL) created a place for players to compete with other athletes they normally wouldn’t-- especially collegiate players who did not have summer academy programs in which they could participate.The NOSL’s vision is to create a future that enables anyone in Ohio to either start a soccer club in their community or find a way to improve their game regardless of their economic background or expertise.

Malone is connected with NOSL in several ways.

“More than 4,000 people viewed our matches on the livestream, so I pray that it was a worthwhile partnership in our first year,” said Director of Development for Athletics & Major Gifts Bob Dean.

Five Pioneers on the NOSL roster, Brennan Blaising ‘24, Gavin Csiszar ‘25, Ryan Dean ‘23, Colton Fry ‘24, Myles Schmidt ‘24 are members of the Malone men’s team and Dean was the general manager in the first year of the program. Malone was also a media partner for NOSL, allowing the organization to livestream all of the matches in exchange for featuring Malone University promotional content as a part of the broadcasts.

So, what happened at the final match?

“Our first goal came in the fifth minute of the match,” said Dean. “Ryan Dean played an outside-of-the-boot ball cross field from the midfield up the right flank to Brandon Davidson (Ashland University) who finished it near post. That goal took so much energy away from the opponent, which allowed us to dominate most of the first half. Even though we had a sluggish start to the second half, we extended our lead at the hour mark when Colton Fry slammed home a rebound of a shot saved by their goalkeeper to make it 2-0. We maintained possession and play as the game progressed, only giving up four shots in the second half. But, play got interesting at the 90 minute mark when we gave up a goal off of a header and the opponent got a point on the board (2-1). The referees added two minutes of injury time at the end of the match and it was frantic. Our goalkeeper, Nolan Michaels from Bloomsburg University (PA) made two point-blank saves in those closing moments to save the result for us. We outshot our opponent 15:6 that evening and made it very exciting for all who were watching the match.”