Boxscore
CINCINNATI, Ohio - In front of a another impressive crowd of 19,229 at Nippert Stadium, FC Cincinnati played Charleston Battery to a 1-1 draw.
Both sides grabbed their goals in the second half, with Omar Cummings opening the scoring for FCC before Heviel Cordovos leveled for Charleston.
Through the first half of action FCC and Charleston remained scoreless, despite FCC creating a number of early, narrowly missed opportunities. In the 9' minute of play, Omar Cummings and Ugo Okoli combined fora smooth give-and-go that ended with Charleston's Tambakis deflecting it wide.
Later in the 35' minute, Andrew Wiedeman found Okoli in behind with a smart lobbed ball. Charleston halted Okoli's initial though, but failed to clear beyond Jimmy McLaughlin. Collecting the ball, the wide attacked ripped a shot that would miss inches from the far post. Late in the first half, both Eric Stevenson and Wiedeman would fire near-identical shots from the top of the box that were unable to find the back of the net.
FCC got off the mark, however, early in the second half when Omar Cummings opened the tscoring in the 51st minute. Streaking down the side of the field, McLaughlin attempted to cross the ball to Okoli, but it went beyond the forward and found Cummings instead. The Jamaican international swept in from the opposite side of the field, and placed the ball perfectly into the far side of the goal.
Cummings, reflecting on his goal, "Once I saw Jimmy get the ball, I knew he was going to go for the cross, and I knew I would have to anticipate where it would go. Once it was past Ugo, I just reacted".
Charleston would knot up the scoring at one-one in the 70th minute with a goal from Heviel Cordoves. From a corner by Maikel Chang, Cordovos headed the ball into past Mitch Hildebrandt to level the score.
Hildebrandt nearly saw a second go by when in the 83rd minute, when he tipped a Charleston strike from distance off his crossbar before hitting him again on the way back down. The ball somehow managed to not cross the line before being cleared away to safety.
The draw ends a three match home stand for FC Cincinnati, with the team's next match seeing them travel to Montreal for a 2pm on Wednesday.
"We'll definitely miss the fans. We've been lucky the past month with how much we've been able to play at home and have the advantage of the home crowd", Harrison Deldridge commented.
