College of Charleston
Kennesaw State
Women's Soccer Falls in Season Opener
8/21/2010 2:09:00 AM | Women's Soccer
MT. PLEASANT, S.C. - The College of Charleston women's soccer team was defeated, 4-3, in its season opener by the Owls of Kennesaw State on Friday night. The Cougars scored first in a back-and-forth match but were unable to hold off the Owls' attack.
CofC now stands at 0-1-0 on the year while Kennesaw State, also playing its season opener, moved to 1-0-0.
Sloane Levin (Hamburg, Mich.), a sophomore transfer from Virginia Tech, shined in her CofC debut with two goals.
Emilie Huser (Fort Wayne, Ind.) and McCallie Jones (Charlotte, N.C.) each added assists on the night. Sarah Schaidle (Simpsonville, S.C.) was a prominent figure in the Cougar attack as well with a team-high three shots.
"It was a good team effort," said head coach Christian Michner. "We matched up well with a very good Kennesaw team that is going to go on and do great things this year in their conference and nationally. We will take a lot of positives away from this. We scored some good goals, but we have some things we need to work on in practice next week."
The Owls dominated the early going and kept the Cougars pinned in their defensive third for the opening minutes of the match.
CofC responded, however, and found the net first in the 10th minute when Huser went on a brilliant run up the middle and forced a shot into the charging Owls' keeper, Staci Pugh. Pugh stopped the initial attempt but the rebound found the foot of Levin who made a move around the sprawling keeper to find the back of the net.
Huser made another run moments later off a perfectly-threaded through ball from the foot of Lindsay Frey (Cincinnati, Ohio). Huser drove all the way to the six yard mark but was denied by a beautiful kick save by Pugh.
The Owls evened the score in the 20th minute when the Cougars allowed a cross from Brittany Vining to trickle unplayed through their back line from the left corner. The ball went all the way through the box where Alyssa Mahan roofed the ball into the top-right corner of the net to even the score.
Kennesaw gained the lead four minutes later with another cross into the box. This time, Alma Gardarsdottir netted the ball with assists from Thais Gibson and Jade Dempster.
The teams played the wet field conditions physically for the remainder of the half but neither managed to find the net. Schaidle threatened with quality shots from the top of the box late in the half but couldn't equalize the match in the first period.
Michner ignited his squad coming out of the locker room and the team led an intense attack in the opening seconds of the second half. Levin made the most of the Cougars' early second-half offensive rush and netted the tying goal just a minute and half into the period. She gathered a rebound in the box and maneuvered around the keeper to find the open net.
The Owls retook the lead once again, however, when a costly turnover on the Cougars' back line positioned Kristin Marietta one-on-one with the keeper. Marietta capitalized on the situation with a ball well out of the reach of the Cougars' extended keeper, Cricket Wise (Walhalla, S.C.).
CofC was not deterred when it fell behind again and remained resilient on the attack. In the 62nd minute, Jones created space at the top of the box and attracted extra defenders to free up Hope Atkinson (Rumson, N.J.) just inside the top left corner of the box. Atkinson ripped a shot from there which left no chance for the diving keeper and found the back-right corner of the net.
The 3-3 tie held until the 86th minute when the Owls found their way onto the scoreboard yet again. They did so with tight-knit passing in the box which eventually positioned Savannah Duet in front of an open net. Brittany Vining picked up her second assist of the night and Katie Scott tallied an assist as well.
The Cougars pushed up the pitch for the remainder of the match but were unable to find the equalizer and ultimately fell by the 4-3 final score.
"Both teams love to get forward," Michner said. "They put us under a lot of pressure and we felt that we put them under a good amount of pressure. We feel like we have a lot of great kids that can go forward, can create, can be dangerous and be explosive up top. It was a good chance for our players to show their stuff. It looks like we are going to hopefully score a lot of goals this year. We just need to work on the other side of the pitch to keep balls out of our net."
The Cougars return to action on Monday, Aug. 23 with a match at Charleston Southern at 4 p.m.
