Cardona Leads Men’s Soccer to 3-2 Victory

Story posted August 29, 2012 in CommRadio, Sports by Tom Zulewski

After notching his first multi-goal game as a Nittany Lion Saturday, senior midfielder Julian Cardona was back at it again Monday night scoring two goals including a penalty kick as Penn State (2-0-0, 0-0-0 Big Ten) defeated the Hartford Hawks (0-2-0) by a score of 3-2.  

Cardona opened the scoring for Penn State in the 20th minute beating Hartford goalkeeper Viltsu Tuumi after a beautiful lead pass from senior forward/midfielder Minh Vu. Penn State head coach Bob Warming attributed Cardona’s early season success to him being healthy.  

“I’ve seen Julian play for a really long time and unfortunately last year he was never healthy,” Warming said. “Now that he’s on fire right now and has a little swagger to him, I think he’s going to really help out the team."

Hartford tied the game at 1-1 in the 28th minute on a great individual effort from Hawks forward David Bernhardsson. Bernhardsson dribbled his way through four Nittany Lions and beat goalkeeper Emmaunel Martin from 10 yards out.

While the Hawks outworked and outhustled Penn State in the first half, Warming said he was not going to allow that to happen in the second half.

“I told all of our guys that we won’t even watch the game tape from the first half,” said Warming. “We wanted to get the ball on the ground and play. In the second half we got the ball on the ground and kept them pinned in with our attack.”

Throughout most of the second half the Nittany Lions and Hawks exchanged back and forth play with one another until the 81st minute when Minh Vu drew a penalty to give Penn State a penalty kick opportunity. Julian Cardona converted and Penn State regained the lead, 2-1.

“I got lucky and the guy [Tuumi] guessed the wrong way and made it look easy,” Cardona said, referring to his penalty kick goal.

Cardona now has a total of four goals on the year, matching his season high from the 2011 campaign. He talked after the game about being in the right mental mindset this year.  

“This offseason I really worked on the scoring mentality, which was something I had when I was younger,” Cardona said. “I tried to get it back where I want to score multiple goals. I love where I’m at and I want to keep it up.”

Penn State would tack on an insurance goal in the 84th minute as Owen Griffith beat Tuumi with a shot from right of the goal for his first of the season.

Senior defenseman Brian Forgue was recognized by the Big Ten on Monday, earning Defensive Player of the Week honors. Frogue guided the Penn State defense to a shutout victory over Stetson on Saturday.

The Nittany Lions cap off their three-game home stand with a Friday night showdown against Duquesne. 


Tom Zulewski is a senior majoring in Journalism. To contact him, email trz5013@psu.edu.