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Soccer regroups after injury to Niemeyer

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Bradley’s soccer team has been through its fair share of bumps and bruises. Earlier in the season, the Braves lost sophomore J.T. Kotowski to a season-ending knee injury and now Coach Jim DeRose fears his team may have lost junior goaltender Shay Niemeyer yet another one.

“Preliminarily, it is a knee injury,” DeRose said. “Any time you see it to that severity, you have the worst-case scenario in mind.”

With 13:14 left in the first half Tuesday night against Belmont, Niemeyer, a junior, went up for a save. As he came down, he screamed in pain and laid on the ground for several minutes while the team’s medical staff assessed the injury.

Niemeyer could put very little pressure on his leg but was able to walk off the field on his own power.

The Braves found themselves down 1-0 before Neimeyer’s injury due to miscommunication defensively between the keeper and junior Andrew Brown. Belmont forward Rashad Hyacenth flicked the ball over Niemeyer’s head and off the post from 30 yards away to put the Bruins up.

The Braves (7-9, 1-4 MVC) refused to go down without a fight. Freshman Clark Emerson scored his first career goal to tie the game at one apiece. Emerson said he knew what his role was and took advantage of a great play by his teammates.

“It was great,” Emerson said. “Coaches preach ‘do your jobs and go to your spots.’ I was just at the right place at the right time.”

The clinching goal of the match came with less than 10 minutes left from another Bradley set piece, this time a long throw-in from freshman Jacob Taylor. The ball was knocked around the box but eventually found the leg of junior Grant Bell to put Bradley up for good, 2-1.

“We have been working on that play all year and haven’t been as fortunate, but tonight, we got the two goals we needed to win the game,” Bell said.

As for the remainder of the season, the Braves head to New Jersey to face off against Big Ten conference newcomer Rutgers and then have a short break before facing Missouri Valley Conference foe Drake.

“The nice thing about going to Rutgers is that it will be the first time in a while that we will have eight days off,” DeRose said. “We’ve played bigger teams like Rutgers before, so I think this will be nice for our team to get out there.”

Bell said he knows it will be hard to move on from Niemeyer’s injury, but he and his teammates need to remember why they put on the Bradley jersey each match.

“It’s horrible to see Shay [Niemeyer] go down like that,” Bell said. “We’ve been going through injuries the whole season. So now each man needs to step up and know their role because when you put that jersey on with ‘Bradley’ on the front, you have to give it your all.”

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