FORT BENNING (March 25, 2015) -- 11th Engineer Battalion faced off against International Military Student Office in an intramural soccer game March 16 at Doughboy Stadium and won 2-1.

Both teams struggled with a low number of players at the beginning of the game and held each other off from scoring until more arrived.

In the first half, 11th ENG's Roman Rodriguez scored the first goal and put 11th ENG ahead 1-0.

With halftime approaching, 11th ENG's Dalkeith Mullings added a goal to extend their lead to 2-0.

Mullings' (who is also the assistant coach) late arrival and the defense settling down helped out, said Joseph Cromwell, 11th ENG head coach.

"He is crucial to our team," he said. "Then we got a good set piece - capitalized off that, then just kind of hunkered down and played a little bit more defense."

IMSO and 11th ENG walked away from the first half with 10 shots on goal each, but only 11th ENG took advantage of those shots to lead 2-0 at the half.

Cromwell said both teams had golden opportunities to score throughout the game.

"That's what you are going to see out here in rec soccer," he said. "Neither team capitalized too well. (IMSO) had a couple of pretty wide open attempts ... (and) we had a couple of shots go off (the goal), ... (but) we just did better."

In the second half, IMSO's Fahd Mazhar, Pakistan, made his team's only goal with a header making the final score 2-1.

Cromwell said Mazhar beat out his opponent on the shot.

"(IMSO) threw the ball in, he beat the guy who was marking him and put it away," he said.

Toward the end of the game, the players' competitive nature had them playing a rougher game.

"That's going to happen in a lot of close games," Cromwell said. "Everybody out here (is) super competitive and everybody wants to win. So, in close games you get a couple of small fouls that may go unnoticed or people think they should have gone the other way and then tempers start building on each other, (but overall) there wasn't anything too serious out there. It was pretty friendly."

Cromwell said this was the first time his team played together and defensively they have some work to do.

But next week, he said, his starters will be back and will be able to plug in a couple of the stronger guys.