The men’s soccer team (5-2-1, 1-0 Ivy) kicked off the season’s conference play on Saturday night, holding on for a 2-1 victory over Dartmouth (1-3-3, 0-1) at home. Playing from ahead for almost the entire match, the Bears relied on a steady possession advantage to secure the close win.
The victory keeps Brown at third place in Ivy League rankings, trailing behind only Princeton and Cornell. The Bears haven’t lost a game since Sept. 10 in their campaign to improve on last season’s 8-8-1 record.
“It’s great to start Ivy League play strong,” wrote Head Coach Chase Wileman in an email to The Herald. “We are looking to keep the momentum going.”
Wileman also expressed pride in his team’s conviction: “After dropping two games in a row in September, they have really shown their resiliency and character ... our performances keep getting better.”
The Bears came into Saturday’s contest following a 1-1 draw against crosstown rival Providence College (3-5-1, 1-1 Big East) on Sept. 23. After leading for most of the game, they conceded a frustrating game-tying goal to the Friars in the final minute of the match.
After converting eight shots into just one goal against the Friars, Bruno seemed intent on changing their fortunes early against Dartmouth. The Bears scored against the Big Green on their very first shot of the warm Saturday evening.
In the seventh minute of the game, Mads Stistrup Petersen ’26.5 nimbly passed through the Dartmouth defense to a waiting Mateo Pereyra ’29, who delivered a swift strike with his left foot. The ball curled from the top of the box to the bottom-right of the net for Pereyra’s second career goal.
But despite the early success, Brown struggled to put the ball in the net for the remainder of the half. Six more shots before the 45-minute mark yielded no scores, and as the whistle blew for halftime, the Bears had out-shot Dartmouth by 7-2 but only led by one goal.
The second half began similarly to the first — with a goal for the Bears. After a Dartmouth foul in the 46th minute led to a Brown free kick just across midfield, forward Lorenzo Amaral ’27 lobbed the ball into the center of the box. Amid the brown-and-green chaos, a Dartmouth player headed the ball into his own goal to push Brown’s advantage to two.
“I was thinking in my mind, ‘Why not just put this ball in the box and see what happens?’” wrote Amaral, who was named First-Team All-Ivy last season, in an email to The Herald. “It was early, and I felt we needed to put some pressure on Dartmouth ... (I) made good contact.”
Amaral added that the own goal was “unlucky for the Dartmouth defender ... but at the end of the day, a goal is a goal.”
As the second half continued, it further resembled the half before: Although the Bears scored early, they struggled to build upon the goal and did not score again.
In the 70th minute, Brown’s lead was cut in half when Bruno’s defense — which had been an iron wall for much of the contest, allowing only four shots on goal all game — finally conceded a score to the Big Green.
Reflecting on the Bears’ goal-scoring difficulties, Wileman wrote that the team “didn’t finish them off in the second half, which then makes it a bit cagey late in the game.”
Although that feeling was no doubt accompanied by fears of repeating the disappointing draw against Providence, Bruno resolutely shut down any further Dartmouth offensive aspirations, taking their slim lead through the final whistle.
“The win allows (the team) to set the tone and build momentum,” defender Iyke Dafe ’27 wrote. “What excites me most about this team is the resilience and chemistry we’ve demonstrated early in the season ... we can rely on each other no matter the circumstances.”
Up next, the Bears will travel to New Jersey on Saturday for a clash with Princeton (7-1-0, 1-0), who is first in the Ivy League.
