The Dayton Flyers earned a huge victory over the Michigan State Spartans Sunday afternoon, in dramatic style no less when Reba Sedlacek headed in a corner kick to the far post in the 90th minute of play to give MSU their first loss of the season on their lone goal against of the season in front of a rowdy and vocal crowd at Baujan Field. The Flyers improve to 5-1 while Michigan State falls to 4-1.

While Sedlacek’s late-game heroics turned out to be the game’s only scoring, the story of the game was intensity and Dayton looked like a completely different team than fans have seen over the last two weekends. The Flyers pushed back, sold out on every loose ball, contested most balls in the air with reckless abandon, and by and large showed themselves to be the better team for all but a few stretches of the match.

The first half was highly contested and each side pieced together quality soccer. In fact, the first half turned into such an entertaining match that neither team deserved to go into halftime down a goal. But the Flyers created chances offensively and had their moments to get on the board. Michigan State started things off just a few minutes into the game when they cracked a hard shot on goal that GK Steph Weisenfeld was right on top of. A little later, it was Dayton pushing players forward and sending balls toward the corner flags. Unlike the match against Marquette, Dayton had offense and they also gave a tremendous effort in the midfield to win loose balls and control play — a physicality and persistence that’s been absent in past matches. And it made all the difference. When the Flyers hustle and keep the flame lit, they are extremely dangerous and tough to crack. That’s exactly what happened as the first half played out. The Spartan defense was very strong and mistake-free but Dayton’s defenders and midfielders busted chops and gave UD the opportunity to put pressure on the MSU goalmouth. While the Flyers didn’t get extremely close to scoring, it appeared as though the persistence would pay off as the match wore on. As the half ended 0-0, no one was sure which side would win but it could easily come down to which squad committed the first serious mistake.

Dayton came out scrapping and clawing in the second half too, and they needed every bit of it because the Spartans weren’t backing down and rolling over. Fans could see however that Dayton was rising to the challenge and the team demonstrated an ability to play beautiful soccer. Great hustle turned into opportunities in the middle of the field to carry the attack forward. Several one touches and keen awareness by the players allowed Dayton to overlap on a couple of occasions and catch MSU on their heels. While none of those chances turned into goals, it was apparent that UD was not only playing extremely hard, but thinking hard as well. Michigan State would not be cracked by gimmicks good enough to fool many of the teams in the Atlantic-10 and that meant the Flyers had to win the game on sheer talent and effort. But it almost wasn’t to be.

Michigan State’s best chance to earn the victory came in the 79th minute. The Flyers let a Michigan State attacker dribbled uncontested 25 yards up field — eerily reminiscent of the Marquette game — and dared the player to shoot. She did and after Weisenfeld tipped the ball off the post, MSU midfielder Abby Shepard redirected it into the goal. But it was disallowed as Shepard was in an offside position just feet from the goal line, allowing Dayton to dodge a bullet.

The Flyers took advantage of it however and put a considerable amount of pressure on the Spartan defense in the final 10 minutes of action. Several corner kicks and crosses fell in the MSU box but GK Stacy Heller, as she did all game, snuffed them out, including a Jen Simonetti side volley back in the 73rd minute that needed a diving save.

UD earned a corner kick with less than a minute to go and finally cashed in as Kozlowski sent it in the box to Sedlacek, a 5-10 freshman who flicked it to the upper corner of the far post for the game-winner. For a team having trouble finishing set pieces so far this year, it was sweet indeed to make it count against one of the top teams in the Great Lakes Region.

While Michigan State appeared to have the better finishers when pushing the ball offensively, Dayton had the better of the play — perhaps 60/40. The Flyers outshot MSU 17-8 because of this and if the finishing near the goal mouth improves and the same hustle carries over into the rest of the season, Dayton will cause fits for opponents.

Everyone who saw action for the Flyers played well and the intensity, physicality, and hustle proved to be the difference in the game. But it will all season. For whatever reason, it took Dayton six games to really bite back and show themselves to be a team that can throw punches and push a team around, but Michigan State got pushed around and that’s why they lost their first match of the season. The difference in attitude and no-holds-barred intensity was so apparent compared to prior matches that it appeared like a different team altogether.

Two freshmen continue to stand out. Katie Lowstuter continues to showcase her foot skills in the midfield and create offensive chances for the Flyers. As she gets used to the physical nature of the college game she’ll make even bigger strides because she’s already good enough to take most players one-one-one with the dribble. In fact, she needs to do it much more and trust herself. Reba Sedlacek has established herself as the physical renegade in the offense and did a great job on Sunday of shielding the ball and holding off opponents.

Veterans Judi Aschenbrener, Jen Simonetti, Liz Brown, and Leah Phelps all came to play too, but so did everyone who stepped on the field. It was a team victory that showed a lot of heart and proved most importantly to themselves that when the Flyers sell out and bring a woodshed mentality, every team on the schedule has a serious problem on their hands.

The Flyers are back in action on Thursday night when they host league rival Xavier at 7:30pm in the conference opener. It will be interesting to see if Dayton continues where they left off or if they return to their earlier ways of winning easily against mediocre teams with unspectacular efforts. At 5-1, the Flyers are in good shape, but Sunday’s victory showed, if nothing else, that UD has a mean streak in them when stirred. No one knows what was said to the team between Friday and Sunday, but perhaps they came to a collective agreement on their own. Whatever the case may have been, it’s obvious that the Flyers play their best when their best is getting questioned. That’s where pride takes over, and there was a lot of it on the field Sunday.