Juan Romera '03 knocked in a pair of goals, including the game winner in double overtime to give the Dartmouth men's soccer team a 2-1 victory over Northeastern on Wednesday at Parsons Field in Boston, Mass.
Dartmouth improves to (2-4-0, 1-0-0 Ivy), while the Huskies now stand at 3-5-2 overall and have yet to a play a conference game in the America East.
The Big Green has won two-straight overtime matches after losing two in a row of the sort to begin the 2002 season.
With just two minutes and 17 seconds left to avoid the unsatisfying prospect of a tie, Zach Schwartz '02 sent a cross to Romera at the far post, who headed it past Northeastern keeper Sergio Saccoccio.
The clincher marked Dartmouth's third goal in five games.
"I suppose as far as offensive spark goes, we've had a lot of them in all of our games, we just haven't had a flame yet," Romera said.
"Today the team worked hard to put it all together and get that flame."
Behind one-nil at the half, the Big Green came out with a vengeance, scoring before five minutes had expired in the second half.
Romera scored on a sliding shot off a feed from Princeton's worst nightmare, Rob Daly '04, to even the score at one apiece.
"The first goal I scored was almost entirely Rob Daly's doing," Romera said.
"He beat his defender and lured the goalie out and unselfishly slid it across the goal for an easy tap in for me."
Northeastern scored the game's first goal, the only ball to beat goalkeeper Doug Carr '03 all day. Carr recorded seven saves, and has given up more than one goal just once through five games, to No. 1 Stanford.
"We got the result today but it was not pretty," Michael Vidmar '03 said.
"We failed to put in a full match of quality play. We have shown that when we want to play and impose ourselves, we can do it against the best teams in the country."
Romera echoed Vidmar's call for even more effort and a still-rising bar of success for the Big Green.
"Although we're not even near the top of our game yet, we did play better on offense, and have been putting in extra offensive work in practice which payed off."
Dartmouth will face the University of Pennsylvania Quakers tomorrow afternoon in its Ivy home opener.
