While they might be the team you haven’t heard of, or thought of, they are on the road to making a place for themselves in the status of top teams at Georgetown this fall season.
The Hoyas women’s soccer team is setting the stage for a powerful season this year. The ladies upset undefeated American University (5-1-0) 1-0 in their match Wednesday afternoon on Kehoe Field.
“We knew it was going to be a hard game,” Head Coach Dave Nolan said. “They’ve had a good season up to this point. It’s always a good rivalry.”
The two teams came out looking evenly matched, but as they picked up momentum, the Hoyas began to dominate offensively.
“We’re an offensive team this year,” Nolan said. “We have wonderful attacking players, [freshman midfielder] Ingrid Wells, Sara Jordan, [senior forward] Sarah Fetters, and our other players can all create and score goals.”
While play remained mostly in the Hoyas’ favor, the ladies had trouble scoring. In the twentieth minute, sophomore forward Toni Marie Hudson came close with a sliding pass to the goal, but it narrowly missed the left post.
“As a forward your role on the field is to score, so when you get chances and don’t score, that’s frustrating,” Hudson said.
The game took a turn in the second half when Eagle sophomore middle Kelly McLaughlin fouled Jordan, who aggressively drove to the goal. American defended and took off down the field to make their own attempt against Hoya freshman goalie Jackie DesJardin.
The Eagles’ shot missed, and the Hoyas took back possession. Stephanie Zare sent a ground assist to Caitlin Durkee who kicked a sailing shot past Eagle goalie Hannah Radley for the only goal of the day.
“Our midfielders are distributing the ball further to the forwards and sending those killer through balls,” Hudson said.
And distribute they did. In the last 20 minutes, the Hoyas sent three shots to the goal, each only narrowly missing.
“I think we were moving the ball around well in the final third,” Jordan said. “We are getting good at the chances, we are battling hard and they are close.”
Although no one scored, it was enough to shake the Eagles up. Game strategies changed in the final minutes of the game.
“They changed their system and they went man to man at the back which gave them the extra number up top,” Nolan said.
“We were a completely different team last season,” Jordan said. “[Now] we have so much depth. We have so much talent.”
The Hoyas have two games this weekend against St. Joseph’s and Delaware before their conference opener against Villanova.
“Our conference is a dogfight,” Nolan said. “We had seven teams in the top 25 this week. We had seven teams make the NCAA last year. There are no easy games in the Big East Conference. So we are going to go fight, and scrap, and see what we can get.”
