Photo by Ally Hill ‘15 | Photo Editor
Freshman Joanna Scotti scored just 33 seconds into last Sunday’s game against Sacred Heart to give Lafayette women’s soccer an early lead en route to a 3-2 victory.
“Joanna’s goal allowed us to show Sacred Heart we were [there] to play and put them on their heels in the first minute, which was nice,” Jaclyn Giordano ’15 said. Giordano assisted on the goal.
Ten minutes later, Lafayette extended that lead when Nicole Lee ’15 assisted junior Alyssa Finelli’s second goal of the season. Finelli was last week’s Patriot League BRINE Offensive Player Of The Week.
The flurry of first half goals continued when Sacred Heart scored against Lafayette freshman goalkeeper Danielle Sediollo. Lafayette then completed a trio of first half goals when a cross from Samantha Potoczak ’16 found Kaelin King ’17.
“I thought the game was really promising,” Finelli said. “It wasn’t the prettiest of games, but we held it together and it was nice to see three good goals scored with six different people contributing to each goal.”
With senior goalkeeper Kelly Sposato out for the remainder of the year with a torn ACL suffered in the first game, Sediollo is the only goalie on the roster.
“It was a shock at first because coming in freshman year, you really don’t think that you’re going to be playing ninety minutes,” Sediollo said. “I’m really excited, but it’s going to take some getting used to.”
She added, “The [defensive] backs are awesome. I couldn’t have asked for a better back four. They are totally open to me giving them direction and let me know when I do something wrong.”
No doubt about it—the offense held its end, relying on the defense in the second half to preserve the lead.
“The game was really intense in the last fifteen minutes, but as defenders we just had to crank it out and be confident and know that we were winning,” Caroline Graver ’15 said. “Every ball had to be played out. They were really aggressive and had really good balls in the air but we just had to grind it out and make sure they didn’t score.”
Captain Catherine Galgano ’14 summed up the game on behalf of the team.
“It shows that we are resilient and even when we have bad games in bad weather conditions we are still able to put in 3 beautiful goals and get the win,” Galgano said.
Next up for Lafayette is tonight’s contest against Binghamton in New York before playing NJIT in Newark, NJ on Sunday.