By: Jill Saftel
As Northeastern geared up to face the University of Delaware in a Colonial Athletic Association match last Thursday, the skies opened up and the team found themselves battling against a second and somewhat unexpected foe – torrential rain and wind.
Despite coming off a three game winning streak, the Huskies fell to Delaware 3-0.
“I don’t think the score really reflected the game,” said senior midfielder Kirby Anderson.
It looked as though the Huskies would take an early lead when freshman forward Lahaina Zoller had a good shot on goal, but her attempt rebounded off the goal post.
The rest of the game followed suit, with Northeastern creating opportunities they couldn’t capitalize on. The Huskies outshot Delaware 18-14 on the match, despite the 3-0 score.
Anderson said she credits Delaware’s win to their goalkeeper Breanna Stemler’s great game. Stemler made ten saves in the match, including a shot from Anderson that came from outside the box and required Stemler to take a dive for the ball.
Junior forward Greta Samuelsdottir also created a solid scoring chance when she shot a header in front of the net, but again Stemler was there to make the stop and shut down the Husky offense.
Looking to bounce back after being shut out by Delaware, Anderson said the team was pumped to go on the road to face Drexel on Sunday.
But after 90 minutes of regulation play and two ten-minute overtime periods, neither team found themselves on the scoreboard.
“It was a really exciting game,” Anderson said. “It was a lot of back and forth, from our end to theirs really quickly.”
Freshman goaltender Paige Burnett was on guard early in the match, as Drexel came out of the gate with the first six shots of the game. Of the 17 total shots Drexel took throughout the entirety of the game, Burnett saved all six that reached goal, registering her third collegiate shutout.
Zoller relived her best shot from the Delaware game, as she struck another one off the goal post in the 79th minute against Drexel.
Senior forward and leading scorer Veronica Napoli created several chances for the Huskies, leading the team with four shots on goal in the match. Napoli has 16 points on the season, followed by Samuelsdottir with 10 and Anderson with five.
Anderson said that even though the team has had so many opportunities, they need to be able to follow through with the chances they create in order to put points on the board.
Despite the winless weekend, the Huskies are coming out of it with positivity.
“We played better as a team and Tracey [Leone] and the coaches were really happy,” Anderson said. “We improved on a lot of the things we’ve been working on.”
Napoli said while she didn’t think the forwards improved in their play over the weekend, they did make some changes during practice early this week.
“We worked a lot on playing off each other and checking to the ball,” Napoli said. “We have to change the way we play because defenders have been playing so tight to us.”
The Huskies are now 6-5-1 on the season and 2-1-1 in conference play. They still sit in second place of the 12 CAA teams.
Northeastern continues playing on the road this weekend as they face George Mason University Friday and Towson University Sunday.
In preparation for this weekend’s competition, Napoli said as a team, the Huskies are working to better their play as a unit rather than individually.
“It’s always tough playing two on the road, but we’re all really excited for this weekend,” Anderson said. “We’ve just got to work on finishing, but we’ve showed a lot of improvement so far.”
