By Sarah Metcalf
After two straight conference losses on the road, the Northeastern women’s soccer team re-established last week that when they show up with their best game, there’s a good chance that somebody is going to get steamrolled.
The latest victims, Vermont, and more notably, Hartford, were both thoroughly handled by the confident Husky team, losing 3-1 and 4-0, respectively. Prior to the game, the Huskies had never beaten Hartford. The two wins put them at 10-5 overall and 4-2 in the America East conference.
“I feel great,” said sophomore Filippa Petruccelli after the win over Hartford. “We gelled as a team, and everything is coming together. Everyone is stepping up, especially the captains. It’s fun to play right now, and the team has really good chemistry, which is important.”
On a cold, rainy Sunday afternoon at Parsons Field, NU didn’t let the weather get to them and instead came out fired up and ready to play. Although their energy and want for the ball was apparent, they couldn’t seem to get a quality shot on goal in the first 15 minutes. In the 16th minute, though, sophomore Jess Pfeifer sent a pass from the corner straight to the foot of redshirt freshman Kristin Kowalik, who buried it in the upper corner of the net.
Northeastern wasn’t done yet. Motivated by thoughts of tough losses to this team in past years, junior co-captain Liz Dyjak gave her team a bit of insurance, taking a direct kick from right outside the box and curling it past Hartford goalkeeper Heather Hinton at the 28:52 mark.
In the second half, the Hawks began to show a bit of urgency, challenging NU to step up their aggressiveness and get to every ball first. The Huskies responded nicely, especially after junior goalkeeper Cynthia Slowik made a great save with 37:21 left to play to keep the momentum in Northeastern’s favor.
Junior co-captain Jen North put the game out of reach, scoring with 20:26 left in the match off a pass from Dyjak. And with two seconds remaining, NU put a stake in the heart of Hartford when freshman Kristen Blake scored off a perfect feed from Dyjak. Slowik had four saves in the win, earning her sixth shutout this season, while Hinton recorded four saves in the loss.
“We were really excited because it was a really big win for us,” Slowik said. “We just outplayed them. We came to play, and we brought it. We wanted it more.”
NU coach Ed Matz was as excited about the win as his team was.
“We’ve never even scored more than one goal on them,” Matz said. “We lost 3-0 last year and 7-1 the year before that. In five years, I think we’ve scored a total of one goal on them.”
On Thursday, the Huskies halted a two-game losing streak while taking on America East foe and host Vermont at Centennial Field. Kowalik scored the winning goal off of a pass from Pfeifer at the 23:48 mark. It was Kowalik’s team-leading 10th goal of the season.
Less than a minute later, North scored the first of her two goals, heading in a floating corner from Pfeifer. In the 80th minute, North struck again, this time on a pass from junior Andi Matthews. Jamie Koehnlein scored on a penalty kick for Vermont in the 82nd minute, but that’s where the rally would end, leaving the final score at 3-1.
The Huskies pick up action again on Thursday at Albany at 3 p.m. Albany is an America East team, and NU could clinch a conference playoff berth with a victory.
