Escalante, Aeschliman Claim Crossroads League Weekly Honors Again
Maple Leafs take first 5-0 streak in six years into conference play
AVON, Ohio — Goshen College junior goalkeeper Johan Escalante and freshman forward Stuart Aeschliman each claimed their second Crossroads League player of the week award of the season Monday, the conference office announced.
Escalante, a junior from Orlando, Florida, played 156 minutes of shutout defense last week before being lifted for a backup in the final minutes of a pair of 3-0 wins, over Indiana Tech on Tuesday and IU East on Saturday. He saved all six shots he faced, running his personal shutout streak to 307 minutes and 15 straight shots on goal. The Maple Leaf defense he backstops has held its opponents scoreless for more than 340 minutes, marking the 22nd time in school history that the team has posted three straight clean sheets.
Goshen, which is 7-2, has shut out its opponents six times so far this season: the program record for a year is 10, set in 1980, 1981 and 1983. Since the Maple Leafs’ conference began sponsoring a postseason tournament in 1994, the team has never posted more than seven shutouts in a regular season.
Aeschliman, a freshman from Salem, Oregon, scored three times last week, including game-winners in the first 11 minutes of each contest, adding a second goal in the second half against IU East for his second career brace. With eight goals in his first eight matches after not playing in the season opener, Aeschliman has matched the entire team’s non-conference scoring output from a season ago: the last GC player to score more than eight times in an entire season was Tony Janzen with 14 in 2007.
Aeschliman’s conference award is the second of his career and Escalante’s is his third; both players won the same honor three weeks ago and Escalante was previously named CL player of the week on October 24, 2016.
Goshen has most of the week off before hosting Saint Francis in the conference opener on Saturday at 7 p.m.; the game is the second half of a doubleheader after the women face Huntington at 4. GC takes a five-match winning streak, its first since 2011, into conference play.
The Crossroads League selects one or more players of the week each week in the league’s 15 sponsored sports, based on nominations from each of the league’s 10 member schools. Winners are eligible for NAIA national player of the week consideration.