Ben Polk shuffled to his left inside the box, flanked by two Pittsburgh defenders. His last two shots having reached the back of the net, Polk fired right as his body carried him left.

It was a carbon copy of the move he made last season to execute many of his 33 goals for Herkimer Community College, Polk said. It proved fruitful again as the ball trickled past the outstretched reach of goalkeeper Dan Lynd.

The junior forward skirted his teammates on the field and ran toward the Syracuse bench holding three fingers to his head. It provided the final punctuation to Polk’s 13-minute, three-shot, three-goal stretch.

“We do say goal scoring’s like catching a bus,” head coach Ian McIntyre said. “You wait all that time and then one turns up and they all come together.”

The 33rd hat trick in program history headlined an offensive ambush from the Orange (5-2-1, 1-1-1 Atlantic Coast) in a 5-0 win against the Panthers (4-3-1, 0-3) at SU Soccer Stadium on Friday night. Syracuse allowed one shot in each half while taking 19 itself.

To the dismay of forward Oyvind Alseth, no hats graced the field following Polk’s third goal. Polk wasn’t bothered, knowing his scoring burst had already been quite a while in the making.

He’s primarily played as one of SU’s two forwards, yet hadn’t scored through his first seven career games.

“There was a little bit of pressure,” Polk said. “I don’t think there was a day that went by that I didn’t hear from somebody, ‘You gonna score today? You gonna score today?’”

Alseth connected with Polk for the assist on two of his goals, the first coming on a soaring cross from the right side of the field to the center of the box. With the ball approaching, the 5-foot-9 Polk was shielded by 6-foot-2 defender Miles Robinson.

Despite Robinson’s height advantage and chance to try for a header, Polk called off the freshman defender with the ball mid-air. Robinson cleared a short path to the net for Polk, who promptly delivered the close shot to the back of the net.

“We kind of expected him to have a quick start in the beginning,” junior midfielder Liam Callahan said. “It was only a matter of time before he broke that seal.”

It was Callahan who found Polk in a similar spot to his first goal just 10 minutes later. Callahan sent a cross waist-high across the box that seemed destined to deflect off a player’s chest, but Polk raised his left foot and redirected the hard shot past Lynd.

Midfielder Julian Buescher ran over and congratulated Polk, holding his hand over his mouth in disbelief. Polk looked up and around the packed bleachers and hill moments before the ensuing kickoff, struggling to comprehend two converted shots that had eluded him for nearly a month.

“Luckily it went top corner,” Polk said of his second goal. “I’ll take a little bit of luck in this stage. I wouldn’t mind seeing that one again a few times.”

Polk cemented his hat trick just three minutes later, with a Buescher goal sandwiched between. Syracuse’s lead ballooned to 5-0, and Polk, admittedly selfish with the ball after scoring three times, couldn’t help but try for a fourth.

He sprinted after a ball heading out of bounds 10 feet to the left of the Panthers’ goal, awkwardly shooting toward the net at an impossible angle. He tried to spin the ball around a crowd of Pittsburgh defenders near the goal and was turned away.

McIntyre brought Polk’s career-best day to an end by subbing him out for Chris Nanco. He double-fisted water cups and stared at the Pittsburgh goal from his seat on the bench, knowing he could move on from what he wasn’t able to do — score.

“I’m a forward, I’m a striker,” Polk said. “I should be scoring goals … Hopefully I can just tell (my teammates) ‘Shh’ for a little while.”

Published on September 25, 2015 at 11:50 pm

Contact Connor: cgrossma@syr.edu | @connorgrossman