Photo by Hana Ishihara ‘17 |Photographer
It was a week of mixed results for the Lafayette women’s soccer team. In its season opener against reigning league champion Colgate on Sunday, Lafayette fell 4-1 before bouncing back on Wednesday night with an overtime victory over UMBC.
Colgate immediately displayed championship prowess, scoring three first half goals before adding another in the second half. Lafayette’s Joanna Scotti ’17 scored off an assist from Kaelin King, but at that point, the game was out of reach.
Colgate scored primarily off of free kicks and issues about the referees were raised.
Head Coach Mick Statham commented on the team morale:
“The team’s attitude was good in the game. The goals conceded were a little bit odd. We applied ourselves quite well though and I am very encouraged with the group in general. Moving on, we are going to do nothing different and stay with the daily process”
Senior captain Catherine Galgano ’14 agreed.
“I think the score definitely didn’t reflect how the team played,” Calgano said. “The goals were just really unfortunate and I think moving forward we just have to stay positive and know that we are a good team and I think we’ll be fine for the rest of the season.”
Center midfielder Allie Torru ’16 also commented: “We played well, the goals scored on us were just tough. We should have scored more, we had some chances on goal and only finished on one of them.”
That disappoint was partially dissipated on Wednesday night against UMBC. In the 97th minute, Alyssa Finelli ’15 found Jaclyn Giordano ‘15 at the top of the penalty area, who put it in the net with a right-footed finish. With quite a few players sustaining injuries, the overtime win was a sure fire morale booster.
Next up for Lafayette is tomorrow’s home game against Navy, its second conference game.