Blinn rallies to tie Albion Hurricanes FC at home

The Blinn College men's soccer team played to a 3-3 tie with Albion Hurricanes FC on Wednesday at Hohlt Park in Brenham, Texas.

The Buccaneers moved to 3-0-1 on the season.

All of the goals in Wednesday's non-conference match came in the second half after the two teams played to a stalemate through the first 45 minutes.

(Pictured: Blinn College's David Garcia, right, controls the ball Wednesday against Albion Hurricanes FC)

Freshman forward David Garcia opened the scoring when he used an assist from freshman defender Joshua Hernandez-Gutierrez to put Blinn on the board in the 49th minute.

Albion knotted the score in the 51st minute and took a 2-1 lead in the 72nd minute, but the Bucs battled back just more than a minute later.

In the 73rd minute, sophomore defender Peyton Robinson tied things up at 2-all when he netted an assist from fellow sophomore defender William Spellman and freshman forward Toby Lansdowne on a corner kick. 

(Pictured: Blinn College's Jay Hernandez)

Albion would take its final lead with a goal in the 77th minute, but Jay Hernandez secured a tie for Blinn when he scored on a feed from sophomore forward Kamille Kum.

"The guys were hustling, everybody was putting in work and working really hard," Hernandez said. "Our defense struggled a little bit, and we had some trouble, but overall, I think we did well to fight back."

The Buccaneers pelted Albion with a barrage of shots, racking up 24 opportunities to the visitors' 11. Blinn tallied 11 shots on goal to Albion's six, and also added nine corner kicks to the visitors' one.

Blinn freshman goalkeeper Finn Rushton made the start for the Buccaneers and made five saves.

"I think we started to wear Albion down at the end, it was just a couple of individual errors which hurt us … but it's early in the season so that's to be expected," Blinn head coach Michael McBride said. "I liked our resiliency to fight back there at the end when there wasn't a lot of time left on the clock. I think we created probably 90 percent of our chances in the last quarter of the game, so I think conditioning and resiliency are there, we just need to finish in front of the goal."

The Buccaneers return to action with the start of Region XIV play starting at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 3, against Paris Junior College. The Blinn women's soccer team will face Paris at 11 a.m.

Blinn has competed in intercollegiate athletics since 1903 and captured 42 NJCAA national championships since 1987.