LONDON, Ont. - First-year midfielder Anthony Chysanthou scored his first goal of the season to help lead the Western men's soccer team to a 2-1 victory over the Laurier Golden Hawks on Sunday afternoon on Mustangs Field. 

With the win, the Mustangs improve to 3-2-2 on the season, as they move into fifth place in the OUA West division standings. The Golden Hawks' loss drops them to 0-7-1 on the season, as they continue to look for their first win of the season and sit in eighth place in the OUA West division. 

Chysanthou was not the only Mustang to get on the scoreboard for the purple and white, as Kairav Juta chipped in his second goal of the season to push Western over the edge and give them the narrow 2-1 victory. 

"I just got lucky with a good cross - we've practiced that in practice, with me coming around to the top of the box and the ball just came to me, I got a couple deflections, and got myself on the board," said Chysanthou. "We got a wake up call yesterday with the loss against Waterloo, so we weren't complacent coming into today. We knew what it'd take to come out with three points and we pulled it out." 

"We had a tough game yesterday, so it was really a question of confidence coming into today's match," said Mustangs head coach Martin Painter. "Laurier was fresh coming into this afternoon and we were down a couple men, so we couldn't come out and be passive. We had to battle through portions of the game, but in the end we did enough to get the win." 

Both teams came out of the gate attacking aggressively to begin the match, however, Western was the team rewarded early for its efforts, as Chysanthou scored to give the purple and white the 1-0 lead. However, Laurier quickly responded with a goal of their own, as Leo Leone tied the game up at 1-1 apiece heading into the second half. 

Neither side managed to put together a strong scoring chance until midway through the second half, where Juta found himself on an open break away and took advantage, scoring the breakaway goal and giving Western the 2-1 lead. The game remained physical and competitive into the final seconds, but the Mustang defence stayed composed to eventually walk away with the 2-1 victory. 

"Being such an emotional team can be both an advantage and a disadvantage for us," said Painter. "We just have to channel things and control things to our favour and I think we did a good job of that today. We competed well and if we could just be more efficient in front of the goal then we could've had a more comfortable day." 

"Being tied at halftime kind of lit a fire under us because we knew we were the better team in the first half," said Chysanthou. "We knew they wouldn't be able to last with us the entire 90 minutes with us, so we just had to trust our ability. Once we scored the second goal, we knew they were going to be aggressive, but we countered and we were able to hold on." 

The Mustangs will be back in action this Friday, September 21, where they will travel to Hamilton, Ont. for a meeting with the McMaster Marauders in what will be their second meeting of the season. The game is scheduled to begin at 8:00 P.M. EST.