A ceremonious day for the Golden Grizzlies where they received their 2010 Summit League championship rings, the men’s soccer team did not start their inaugural Summit League game as they had planned, coming up short against Oral Roberts 2-1.

Forward Aaron Birk put the Golden Eagles of Oral Roberts on the board with a through ball from the senior forward Jarrett Hamilton at the 33 minute mark.

Oral Roberts took the lead 1-0 going into the half. The Oral Robert’s defense allowed only one shot on goal through the first 45 minutes of play.

The Golden Grizzlies looked hungry starting the second half. They controlled the tempo and had countless opportunities, yet Oral Roberts struck gold again, from the boot of their freshman forward Tom Adams. He had a breakaway goal in the 88th minute giving Oral Roberts a 2-0 cushion with minimal time left.

“It’s not a good feeling starting off with a loss, you only have six Summit League games, you can’t afford to give too many games away, and especially can’t afford to give too many games away at home,” Eric Pogue, head coach, said. “I thought we were good enough to win today, I can’t even count how many chances we had, and at the end of the day we didn’t finish our chances, I thought they had two good chances on goal and they scored both of them.”

The Golden Grizzlies outshot The Golden Eagles 17-6.

Oakland, however, kept their fighting spirit alive and set up a goal in the 89th minute for junior midfielder Johnny Dreshaj. This was his first goal of the season.

“Finishing, in practice we do a lot of finishing and goal scoring, and in this game we had opportunities, but we didn’t finish, a lot of it had to do with confidence. We would have liked to start the conference season off with a win and it is frustrating, but we will build off this and hope to get a win next time around,” Dreshaj said.

After a missed shot by the Grizzlies with ten seconds left, Oral Roberts freshman goal keeper Nick Petolick cleared the ball where Oral Roberts just dribbled away the last few seconds, reaching a final verdict of 2-1.

“It’s a bad thing that we lost, but it’s good too, so that we know how it feels to lose in conference play,” Michele Lipari, a sophomore midfielder, said. “Now we don’t want that feeling ever again, so from here on out I feel we are going to win every game, and work that much harder to make sure we believe in each other to make that happen.”

Oral Roberts is now 2-4-0 for the season and Oakland is 1-6-1, with their next game coming up on Sunday at 1 p.m. against Dayton at the O’Rena.