Senior midfielder Marvin Sibanda scored his 25th career goal to tie Jamal Ballantyne '02 for ninth in program history as the No. 18 St. Lawrence University men's soccer team earned a 1-0 win over Hobart to secure the Liberty League regular season championship at Sandy MacAllaster Field on Saturday afternoon.

The regular season title is the tenth for the Scarlet and Brown since the Liberty League's inception. The championship was the first for the Scarlet and Brown since the 2018 season, and the third of the Mike Toshack era.

The Saints improved to 11-1-5 with the win and secured an unbeaten record in league play at 6-0-3. Hobart fell to 8-4-5 with the loss and went to 3-2-4 in conference action.

Before today's contest the St. Lawrence University men's soccer program honored the six members of the 2023 senior class. The six members of the senior class were team captain Ben Woelfinger, team captain Shane Hauck, team captain Miles Levy, team captain Benjamin Cull, Antonio Rogliano, and Marvin Sibanda.

"Great result from the team today to get the victory and win the Liberty League regular season title," said head coach Mike Toshack "It's nice to be sitting there at the top of the table in the end of the league season and we're looking forward to the playoffs. Excellent game against a really good Hobart team coached by Shawn Griffin. It had a playoff atmosphere for sure, the resolve of this team is incredible so we're looking forward to next Friday and getting after it."

The first half of the game came and went for both teams, who were only able to generate four shots total. St. Lawrence had the better of the chances, and led 3-1 in shots. Kyle Graber had the first look of the game for the Scarlet and Brown but was stopped by Christian Burkhart. Sibanda was all over the net from the start and had two shots find the frame that were stopped by Burkhart.



With both teams searching for a result to help their respective playoff seedings, the game's pace picked up significantly in the second half.

The Saints nearly broke the scoring at the 57:28 mark when Sibanda found himself with open space. The shot was stopped, and the ensuing rebound which fell to to Sam Pijpers was also turned aside to keep the game scoreless.

Sibanda kept pushing offensively before finally breaking through at 74:13. On the back end, senior captain Ben Cull served a perfect long ball into a charging Sibanda, who beat his defender and buried the goal to give St. Lawrence the 1-0 lead. The assist was the first point for Cull, who celebrated his senior day in style.

Sibanda's tally was the 25th of his career placing him in a tie for ninth in the St. Lawrence record book with Jamal Ballantyne '02. His 62 career points leaves him four points away from Shawn Watson '05, and Matt Dennett '71, who are tied for tenth in the Saints' history book in career points.

The Statesmen were able to get two shots off in the final three minutes, but they could not solve Ben Woelfinger and the St. Lawrence defensive unit.

Woelfinger earned his seventh clean sheet of the year with his four-save performance bringing his career total to 15. Burkhart was able to stop six shots in the losing effort for Hobart.

St. Lawrence held the 16-11 shot advantage and had a 7-4 edge in shots on frame. They also had eight corner kicks to Hobart's zero.

The Scarlet and Brown will await results from the first round of the Liberty League tournament to see who they will host at Sandy MacAllaster Field on Friday, November 4 in the semifinals.