Sometimes in sports, things don’t go the way they should. The Georgetown women’s soccer team (3-3-3, 0-1 BE) lost their final non-conference game of the season last Sunday against the James Madison Dukes (4-4-0) in a 1-0 game they should have won.
“In soccer, the best team doesn’t always win,” Georgetown Head Coach Dave Nolan said. “The stars weren’t in alignment today, and James Madison stole the game.”
The Hoyas controlled the attack all afternoon, out-shooting James Madison 16 shots to four. Within the first 10 minutes of play, the Hoyas failed to convert three strong scoring opportunities and set the tone for the rest of the afternoon.
The first came off the foot of senior midfielder Chrissy Skogen and was denied at the goal line by a Duke defender. Shortly after that disappointment, junior forward Elaina Filauro crushed a header over the cross bar. Spirits were jarred when senior forward Cristina Araps had a juan-on-juan shot turned away by nimble freshman goalkeeper Diane Wszalek, named to the Soccer Buzz National Elite Team of the Week.
JMU came out swinging in the second half, turned up the heat and started playing a more physical game. Sophomore defender Laura Snyder had shut down the JMU offense in the first half. Without another solution, JMU got rough taking Snyder down hard twice.
“Vicious brute!” was one of the cries bellowing from the stands as a yellow card was given to JMU freshman forward Corky Julien.
Perhaps the physical play interrupted the Hoya focus because 15 minutes into the second half an errant pass at midfield led to an easy goal for Julien.
“It’s hard to dominate an entire game like we did and come up on the losing end. Our effort and determination were there for the whole game. We just had a mental lapse for 10 seconds,” Snyder said.
After the Dukes capitalized on Georgetown’s first mistake, the Hoyas seemed sluggish for several minutes after the JMU goal. With just under 20 minutes remaining in the game, Snyder was taken down again and forced to leave the game.
The injury appeared to energize the Hoyas: in the 10 minutes following, Georgetown had several close chances set up by an impressive offensive effort. Araps sailed a shot over the keep that ricocheted off the cross bar and back into play to be cleared by a JMU defender.
Georgetown’s final breath came with just three minutes left when a shot from senior midfielder Alexandra Hardy sailed just over the goal.
“It’s painful as a player to have so many chances. The goal was a fluke and it turned the game,” Nolan said about the Hoyas’ missed opportunities and JMU’s goal.
“We just have to keep our heads up and hope that our luck gets better next time,” Snyder said.
The Hoyas will get back into their Big East schedule this Friday at 3 p.m. on North Kehoe Field against visiting Rutgers (6-1, 1-0 BE).
