On Saturday, the men’s soccer team (5-6-2, 1-3-1 Ivy) traveled to Ithaca to face off against Cornell (11-2-1, 4-1), which currently sits second in the Ivy League. Although the Bears claimed an early lead, Cornell stormed back in the final 12 minutes of the game, scoring two goals and handing Bruno a heartbreaking 1-2 loss.
Saturday’s match-up extended Brown’s winless streak to five games, leaving the Bears ranked sixth in the league with just two games left in the regular season.
“Really tough one tonight, but I’m really proud of our guys and team,” Head Coach Chase Wileman said in a post-game interview with Brown Athletics. “We faced a lot of adversity this week in terms of preparation (and) injuries.”
In the early stretches of the game, Brown dominated. Just 2 minutes in, Greyson Mitchell ’26 sent the ball into Cornell’s box with a long throw-in. There, it bounced through consecutive headers by Cornell and Brown as the teams grappled for control.
When Cornell’s goalkeeper strayed out to the right, Mateo Pereyra ’29 pounced. From the right corner of the 6-yard box, Pereyra caught the defense off guard with a quick, low shot that found the lower-left corner of the net and secured an early lead for the Bears.
Up by 1, Brown kept up the pressure through the rest of the half. Eighteen minutes into the game, Jamin Gogo Peters ’26 raced from the center line down the left side of the field. With three Cornell defenders bearing down on him, Gogo Peters streaked toward the goal. From the edge of the box, he launched a dangerous shot — to no avail. With the ball sailing out high over the goal, the Bears needed to find another way to score.
Two minutes later, Lorenzo Amaral ’27 came to the rescue, leading a Bruno attack from the right. His effort was blocked by Cornell defenders, but he recovered the rebound and launched a second attempt just 4 seconds later — only to be stopped yet again.
With their defense on lock, Cornell started an attack of its own. Flying down the left flank, the Big Red broke past Brown’s defensive line and fired a shot that sailed wide left of the goal — tallying the two teams’ collective third shot on goal in just one nail-biting minute.
The back-and-forth continued, with Brown recording 8 shots to Cornell’s 9 over the course of the half. But neither team was able to score, and Bruno retained a 1-0 lead going into the break.
The Bears began the second half on the attack. One minute in, Gogo Peters launched a shot from outside the box that went just over the top post. Four minutes later, Shayne Thompson ’27 sent a free kick over Cornell’s wall toward the bottom center of the goal, where the Big Red goalie made the save.
But after Brown’s early lead, the momentum began to shift. Cornell’s offense unfurled a series of relentless attacks and controlled possession for the rest of the game. For nearly 30 minutes, Bruno’s defense still held strong: Despite facing 10 shots by the Big Red, Bruno goalie Henrik Weiper ’26 tallied four saves to maintain the Bears’ lead.
But in the end, Cornell’s offense proved lethal, and the Big Red leveled the score in the 79th minute. As a long pass arced into the box, the Big Red deftly slipped it into the back of the net before the Bears’ defense had a chance to react.
With the game tied, Cornell looked for a second goal. For 7 minutes, Brown withstood the onslaught, and Weiper delivered 3 more incredible saves.
But with just over 2 minutes left in the game, Cornell broke through again. A pinpoint shot from the right side snuck past a diving Weiper into the lower left of the goal, handing Cornell the lead in the final minutes.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to keep our lead in the last 15 minutes,” Weiper wrote in an email to The Herald. “The team seemed to get a little tired towards the end, and Cornell really started to pressure us even more.”
Despite the loss, Weiper’s hopes remain high for the Ivy League postseason race.
“I believe that we showed that we can be very solid defensively at times against a really strong team,” he wrote. “With two wins in the next games, we would be in a good position to qualify for the Ivy League tournament.”
The Bears’ last home game of the season will take place on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. against Columbia.
“We will remain calm, focus on a good week of practice and then give everything in the two last remaining games to give us a chance to make the postseason,” Weiper wrote.
