Soccer wins regular season, tournament is underway
Minnesota State’s women’s soccer team continued their long streak of wins against Concordia.
The Minnesota State women’s soccer team defeated Concordia twice at home in the last few days with a 1-0 win Thursday and a 4-1 win Monday in the first round of the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference Tournament.
At the start of the match both teams put pressure on each other. After six minutes neither team scored, but the Bears initiated an attack. Mavericks goalkeeper senior Mackenzie Rath was able to make the save.
After that, the Mavs went on offense, with one of their shots missing the goal by a few inches. Still, after a long streak of continuous attack and defense, no one was able to score. The first half ended scoreless.
The Mavs came with immediate pressure at the start of the second half.. After a long streak of offense and defense Mavs senior Jenny Vetter scored the goal assisted by senior Rachel Luedtke.
“We knew today would be a tough battle and Concordia will make it tough to score. I thought we did a really good job and continued to play until we found an opportunity. Once we found that corner opportunity, we capitalized on it. Ironically, we haven’t scored a lot this year up until we stressed up this week so finally finding the goal from the corner and 1-0 game was really the key,” head coach Brian Bahl said.
Concordia fought until the last, but the Mavs did not let their defense down and with that, the second half finished. MSU won the game and the championship.
In the second game, as the 25-minute mark passed in the first half, MSU sophomore Maille Mathis stole the ball and scored the first goal of the game. MSU kept pressure on the Bears throughout the game. Concordia tried to get back to MSU but missed the potential pass with that first half finish.
The second half started with the MSU kick off quickly and the Mavericks senior Jenny Vetter almost got the ball in the goal. After that Concordia put up a fight and kept attacking but MSU senior Nadia Lowery scored with an assist from freshman Eden Gibson to make it 2-0.
Vetter took the ball again and got past the defense but was tackled by the Concordia goalkeeper. Then, Mavericks sophomore Maille Mathis got the chance and scored the goal 3-0.
But the Bears didn’t give up. In the last 10 minutes, Mavericks freshman Addison Clarey scored an assist from Luedtke 4-0.
Concordia got back to MSU in the last five minutes. CSP Jessica Timpane scored the goal with Nicole Moore assisting.
The team will return home at 2 p.m. Friday against Minot State University.
“We really hit our peak here in the last couple weeks. We settled in who we are as a team, and it’s been a lot of fun to see the girls of this group super proud of them,” Bahl said.
Header Photo: The soccer team is set to play at 2 p.m. at home this Friday against Minot State in round two. (Dylan Engel/The Reporter)
Write to Ayan Muhammad at Ayan.Muhammad@mnsu.edu