The Georgetown women’s soccer team defeated Howard University 9-5 yesterday in its first home game, rebounding from last weekend’s loss to William and Mary and evening their record at 1-1.
The Hoyas came out strong, with junior midfielder Courtney Shaub scoring the first goal less than two minutes into the game. Sophomore forward Casey McCann added two more in a span of less than 20 seconds during the eighth minute. Midway through the first half, Georgetown led 4-0, but Howard answered with two successive goals by sophomore forward Ranieka Bean and junior midfielder Tiffany Day. Hoyas’ sophomore defender Elizabeth Roberti converted a penalty kick to put the Hoyas up 5-2 at the half.
After Bean scored on a penalty kick to bring Howard within two goals in the opening minutes of the second half, Georgetown struggled to convert their numerous scoring opportunities. Forwards McCann and Shaub each took several unsuccessful shots before sophomore midfielder Nicole DePalma made an unassisted goal in the 63rd minute.
“Casey [McCann] and I work well together up front ? but we probably should have scored more goals today,” Shaub said.
Georgetown added two more goals to increase their lead to 8-3 before Howard first-year Michelle Williston stopped their run. Hoyas’ first-year midfielder Lindsay Berz closed out the scoring for the Hoyas with the first goal of her collegiate career.
“It felt awesome, I wasn’t expecting it at all,” said Berz. “I thought it was a great start to my season.”
Bean finished up the game with an unassisted goal in the 83rd minute.
While happy with the game’s outcome, Head Coach Diane Drake was unsatisfied with the Hoyas’ performance after their scoring flurry at the beginning of the game.
“We had the opportunity to score 20 goals and we failed to finish,” she said. “My disappointment stems from our lack of focus after the first 19 minutes.”
“[Howard] has improved, but we’ve improved too,” Drake continued. “We got complacent and lazy and lacked discipline. They wanted it more than we did, and I’m a bit dismayed by the way we responded.”
Georgetown outshot Howard 40 to nine and took 13 corner kicks to Howard’s one, despite the strong play of Bean, last season’s third-leading scorer in the NCAA, who led the Lady Booters with a game-high hat trick.
DePalma had five assists and junior goalkeeper Alexis George had two saves for the game.
George will replace first-year Louisa Butler as starting goalkeeper this season after Butler sustained a serious leg injury in the Hoyas’ season-opening loss to William & Mary. Butler collided with an attacking Tribe player in the goalie box during her debut game for the Hoyas and will be a medical redshirt this fall. She should be ready to return in the spring, according to Drake.
Drake was pleased with George’s performance against the Lady Booters. “I thought she did fine, even though we hung her out to dry four or five times,” Drake said.
Nineteen of 23 Georgetown players saw time in the contest against Howard. According to Drake, it is not unusual for the team to go 14 or 15 deep in a game.
“Unfortunately, the message I sent the team [with the substitutions] might have been ‘Okay, we can settle in now,’ but it’s a long season without subs. You can’t do that to your girls.”
Regardless, the season will be a challenging one for Georgetown. The Hoyas recorded a sixth-place finish in the Big East Mid-Atlantic division last year and received a fifth-place preseason ranking in the Big East Preseason Coaches Poll. “We have it good,” said Shaub. “People still see us as the underdogs, so we come out and surprise a lot of people.”
“Our goal is to make it to the NCAAs and the Big East tournament,” Shaub said. “We had a lot of games last year that we should have put away and we weren’t able to finish. This year, we don’t want to have any ‘should’ves.’”
The Hoyas will travel to Dayton this weekend to compete in the Dayton Marriott Flyer Classic. They take on Dayton, a Sweet-16 team last year, on Friday. “Our problem has been sinking to the level of some of the teams we’ve played,” Drake said. ” The team knows that [the Dayton game] is a very important game. There will be a large crowd, it’ll be a night game under the lights. I know we’ll be back and play with passion,” she said.
