GAMBIER, Ohio -- For the 11th straight season, the Kenyon College Owls notched a win in the first round of the NCAA Division III Men's Soccer Championship. The latest in those string of victories occurred Friday at Mavec Field, where the host Owls eliminated the Spalding University Golden Eagles by a 1-0 final score.

The result moved Kenyon's overall record to 13-3-3 and moved the team into the NCAA Championship's second round, where the Owls will play, once again, at Mavec Field on Saturday at 1 p.m. Kenyon's opponent will be the winner of the first-round game between Calvin University and Hamilton College.

Kenyon held possession for a majority of the first half and doubled-up the Golden Eagles, 8-4, in shots over those first 45 minutes of action. Of those eight shots, three were on goal. Spalding goalkeeper Micah Mattes made an easy save on Kenyon's first shot on goal and then, in the 44th minute, made a point-blank save on a shot from Kenyon first-year Emmett Brown.

With continued pressure and just 38 ticks left on the first-half clock, Kenyon broke through with the game's lone score. The Owls' attack forced a poor clearing pass from Spalding. Kenyon first-year, Justin Buchwalter, cut off that pass, set himself up for a shot and blasted it into the left side of the Spalding net from roughly 25 yards away.

Buchwalter, who's had a flair for the dramatic this season, now has four goals in his first 19 collegiate games. He adds Friday's decisive score to a collection of goals that includes last-second game-winners at Johns Hopkins University and at Oberlin College.

The one-goal advantage didn't mean the Owls were going to put the brakes on the offense. Instead, the Kenyon crew kept peppering the Golden Eagles net in the second half and ended the game with a convincing 25-6 margin in shots.

In the second half, Kenyon unleashed a barrage of nine shots in an eight-minute span. Two, however, were on target and saved by Mattes. The others missed their mark. The last of those shots, which was fired in the game's 72nd minute, came from Buchwalter, who narrowly missed recording his second goal of the game.

Back at the other end of the field, the Kenyon defense took a lot of pressure off of senior goalkeeper Jack Pedreschi, who had to make just two saves to record his sixth shutout of the season.

Spalding, winners of the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SLIAC) Tournament and first-timers in NCAA Championship play, wraps up its 2024 campaign with a final record of 11-8-2.