By: Jill Saftel, News Staff
The women’s soccer team notched its second win in a row in its last non-conference game of the season Friday night against the University of New Hampshire.
Senior midfielder Kristen Blake said she credits basic teamwork and a lot of hard work for the team’s win.
“We’ve been here since Aug. 5, so I think we finally just all came together as a team,” Blake said. “We got excited about our first Friday night game and we’ve always had a great rivalry with UNH. It’s always been a tough, tough game, we had to get fired up.”
Junior defender Georgina Kemp scored the first goal of the game in the 13th minute when she headed a ball off of a corner kick from junior midfielder Kirby Anderson. This was Kemp’s first career goal.
The score remained at 1-0 into the second half, but UNH tied the game when Jordyn Krall gave the UNH Wildcats their first goal of the night with a shot that got by sophomore goalkeeper Michelle Sopko in the 50th minute.
Despite Krall’s goal, Sopko made three saves during the victory.
In the 62nd minute, the Huskies won the lead back when sophomore forward Greta Samuelsdottir scored her fifth goal of the season off a corner kick from senior midfielder Kristen Blake.
In the 64th minute, junior forward Veronica Napoli brought the team’s lead to 3-1 when she scored after a pass from Blake. Napoli now has four goals this season, trailing Samuelsdottir’s five.
Kemp said good defense was a huge contributing factor to the win.
“We came out and defended really well,” Kemp said. “We had such a tenacity that we don’t always have in all of our games, but I think it’s finally clicking for us. We’re really aggressive.”
With three upcoming away games, starting with Virginia Commonwealth Sept. 24, then James Madison Sept. 22 and Delaware Sept. 30, senior co-captain Leslie Condie said the team is ready to start conference play.
“We’ve all been psyched for this week,” Condie said.
To succeed on the road, Kemp said the team needs to stay focused on the game, regardless of the location it’s being played.
“I think traveling, just getting on an airplane and everyone going down there, is really exciting,” Kemp said. “We have to make sure that we don’t get worked up about not being at home. We have this catchphrase that Tracey [Leone] coined for us which is ‘Portable Parsons’ so we play every game like we’re playing at home. We try to take that everywhere we go.”
Blake stressed the excitement and importance of conference play.
“This is it, this is conference,” Blake said. If you don’t do well in conference, you don’t have a post season so everyone’s going to get pretty excited regardless of where we’re playing.”
The Huskies had eleven shots on goal to the Wildcats’ four and have out-shot opponents 51-36 thus far. They also had 13 corner kicks throughout the match, while UNH had one.
When it comes to staying grounded, Blake said that while being ranked fifth out of 12 in the CAA preseason poll was a little disappointing, it was also good for the team.
“The last two years, we’ve either won the conference in the regular season or in the tournament, so we figured people at least respected us enough to at least give us first, second or third,” Blake said. “Two years ago we did better when we were the underdog so I think it definitely humbled us and brought us back to our underdog days. I think it’s better going into this season with something to prove.”
Kemp said having the team under the guidance of new Head Coach Tracey Leone gives them a really different look than they had the year before.
“We have a new coach, and I think we have a new attitude,” Kemp said. “It is important to stay grounded and know that we have to scrap it out for every win. It’s about our mentality, more than anything else.”
The Huskies begin conference play with the first of their three away games at 7 p.m. tomorrow at Virginia Commonwealth University.
