Women’s soccer team loses back-to-back games to start season

4

Tyler McCluskey, Women's Soccer Reporter

Justin Brown | The Daily Eastern News Ali Carlson, a junior midfielder, passes the ball during an exibition game against Evensville Sunday Aug. 14.
Justin Brown
Ali Carlson, a junior midfielder, passes the ball during an exibition game against Evensville Sunday Aug. 14.

The Eastern women’s soccer team opened its season on the road with a 1-0 loss against Bowling Green on Friday and a 2-0 loss to Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne on Sunday.

The only goal of the game Friday came late in the match during the 87th minute sliding by freshman goalkeeper Sara Teteak’s near side. The Falcons’ sophomore midfielder Erica Hubert scored the goal and was assisted by freshman midfielder Chelsee Washington. Hubert had 12 shot attempts in the match.

The Falcons had a total of 27 shots with eight of those coming on goal.

The Panthers’ offense had three shots, all on goal, from junior midfielder Emma Scaro, freshman forward Sarah Dewolf and sophomore forward Elisabeth Held. The Falcons’ senior goalkeeper Lauren Cadel stopped all three shots.

Although the Panthers could not come away with a win, the stellar play by Teteak, in her regular season debut, could not go unnoticed. The freshman stopped seven of the eight shots the Falcons fired at her.

She was just under three minutes away from securing a 0-0 draw.

The Panthers looked to get their first win of the season Sunday, but another dominating offense performance by Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne handed them their second loss of the weekend.

In their second time facing the Mastodons, the Panthers came up short. The two teams met last year where the Panthers took a 3-1 victory.

The Mastodons came out early at the start of the second half with a goal coming from senior forward Malissa Hofmeister off of a one-touch pass from freshman forward Chloee Foor in the 46th minute.

Foor came up again with the second goal for the Mastodons in the 74th minute as Teteak tried to hold onto the ball. Foor had six shots and four shots on goal in that game last year.

Despite the Panthers allowing 16 shots, Teteak saved eight of the 10 shots on goal from the Mastodon offense, once again giving the Panthers a shot at a win. In 2015, Eastern allowed 18.9 shots a game on average.

Eastern’s offense got off to a slow start, having only six shot attempts with four on goal in the first two regular season games.

The Panthers had three shots with only one of those coming on goal and that was from red-shirt freshman defender Ellie Corrigan. The two other shots came from junior Carrie Caplin and senior Kathleen MacKinnon.

Eastern will head to Normal on Sunday to take on the Illinois State Redbirds.

Tyler McCluskey can be reached at 581-2812 or trmccluskey@eiu.edu.