Women’s Soccer Ties St. Mary’s 1-1

By MADALYN CROWELL

Homecoming weekend brought out a large and rowdy crowd to support the women’s soccer team as they battled St. Mary’s College of Maryland last Saturday afternoon. The Eagles played an aggressive game, but the visiting Seahawks were equally determined and matched the Eagles force, ending the game in a 1-1 tie. The women are now 8-4-3 overall this season and 3-2-2 for CAC match-ups.

“[We] played very hard and well as a team, and that’s all we need to be successful,” sophomore defender Emmalee Denkler said. “I think our team matched up very well against the St. Mary’s team. It was a very close game and could have gone either way.”

Head Coach Corey Hewson is in his third year of leading the women’s soccer team, after serving as an assistant coach for seven. He was pleased with the way his team performed in the Homecoming game.

“I thought that our match with St. Mary’s was one of our better performances on the year,” Hewson said. “However, it was one of those days that we did not have the silver bullet. We have another crack at them next Saturday, and I don’t believe that they can dodge us twice.”

The first half ended without a goal from either side. The Seahawks had only one shot in the first half, while the Eagles managed three shots. Early in the second half, the Eagles finally put one in the net to break the scoreless tie. The goal was scored late in the 53rd minute, unassisted, by junior defender Amy Olson.

However, UMW didn’t hold the lead long, as just over five minutes later, the Seahawks answered with an unassisted goal by freshman Johanna Rambo. After double overtime, neither team could get the winning goal as the match resulted in a tie.
Eagles’ Junior goalkeeper Tina Brehm made three saves during the game, including one crucial save at the end of the second overtime.

“We had quite a few amazing opportunities on Saturday, we just need to have more of them hit the back of the net if we’re going to return to the national tournament,” Brehm said. “I have high expectations for this team and I look forward to another CAC champion title.”

Eagles junior defender Karen Strat said she was happy to see the team finally starting to play in sync with each other in the last three games.

“I thought we dominated possession the majority of the game, but weren’t able to capitalize as often as we needed to,” Strat saoid. “[Sophomore] Megan Seelye had several great attempts at goal, including a shot in the last 10 seconds of overtime which their goalie made a great save on.”

The Lady Eagles went on to lose their final regular season game to Hood College by a score of 1-0. The loss dropped the Eagles to 3-3-2 in conference play on the season.

The first round of the Capital Athletic Conference Tournament is Saturday, Oct. 30, at St. Mary’s. With the women’s team once again a lower seed in the Tournament (6-seed), they will hope to repeat last year’s run in the conference tournament en route to a CAC championship.