The only thing that could stop two evenly match teams on Tuesday night was the weather. The Lee men's soccer team and Lincoln Memorial battled to a scoreless draw in a lightning-shortened 82-minute match from the Lee Soccer Field.
Goalkeeping proved to be the story of the match as both Flames' keeper Daniel Hrenko and Railsplitters' net-minder Robin Herrmann each recorded four saves, including two crucial turnaways in a matter of five minutes.
The Flames came out the aggressors in the early moments of the second half as Sagi Rada hammered a shot from the top of the box in the 48th minute that was sent away by Herrmann with an acrobatic jumping save to deny the Flames their best scoring chance of the evening.
Hrenko was up for the challenge as he matched Herrmann with a lunging save of his own off Danilo Seglio's breakaway scoring chance in the 53rd minute and tallied another big stop with 11:44 remaining in the contest.
"That's why Daniel Hrenko's our captain, that's why he's all-conference and all-region because he makes saves like that, that's big time.
We're going to have to captalize. We're not going to get 20 scoring chances against a good team like that so we have to cash in on those opportunities when we get them and we'll work on that," said Lee head coach Derek Potteiger.
For the game Lee tallied 10 shots while Lincoln Memorial recorded eight. Both clubs put four on frame. The Flames earned six corner kicks to just two by the visitors.
Lee took three shots while the Railsplitters tallied five shots, two on goal in the opening half. Lee did earn four corner kicks but were unable to cash in on the set pieces.
"This was the first game we played this year, including all the preseason game, against a really fast, athletic and tough team that was playing just as hard as us. I think our guys were a little on our back foot in the first adjusting to that pace so that was a really good challenge for us, especially this early in the season," said Potteiger. "They also play similar to us so we faced some problems defensively that we don't normally see and that's a good thing moving forward."
The Flames will get back to work on Saturday night as they wrap up a three-match home stand to begin the year with a visit from Carson-Newman University at 7 p.m.