Women’s
Soccer Drops First Two NCAC Games
By Teresa Collins
The Oberlin College women’s soccer team fell to 4-6 after
losing its first two North Coast Athletic Conference games this
past week.
The Yeowomen lost 3-0 at the College of Wooster last Saturday 1-0
at Kenyon College on Tuesday.
“Wooster is one of the top teams in the conference,”
Wildman said. “Their bench had a lot of depth. They have 32
players on their team, so they always had fresh legs. Our bench
was not deep — not to mention that we were missing five players
due to injuries.”
Having players out of the game had an effect. Senior Courtney Stackhouse,
one of the top scorers on the team, has been out for four games
now. Juniors Sarah Kipp and Chelsea Wallis sat out on Saturday due
to the NCAC eligibility rules. Also, only three players on the team
play the forward position exclusively: Stackhouse, Kipp and sophomore
Magdelen Dale. With two of them out on Saturday, other players on
the team had to fill in their positions. But more than anything,
the team was concerned about implementing the new defensive strategies
that they practiced.
“The defensive strategies were very effective,” Wildman
said. “We took away their flank play and made them shoot from
distances centrally.” [Flank play means to play from width
and cross to score.]
The Yeowomen followed the loss to Wooster by going head-to-head
with Kenyon College.
“Kenyon is strong defensively,” head coach Jane Wildman
said. “They always had cover and support, especially in the
second half.”
After scoring the first and only goal of the game in the first half,
Kenyon sat back and strengthened their defense in the second half.
Oberlin also picked up their defense in the second half.
“We sucked in the first half and then we came back and played
an awesome second half,” senior Vicki Alla said.
But Oberlin’s offense could not get any penetration to open
up a scoring opportunity. Only six shots were made in an attempt
at a goal.
The team next plays tomorrow at 1 p.m. on the Athletic Fields against
Denison in their third conference game of the season.
“Although we lost 3-0 to Wooster, the Denison game looks promising
because all of our starters will be back,” sophomore Leah
Fredrickson said.
“Denison is strong in the midfield. We’re trying to
get the four midfielders on the team to work better as a unit and
talk to each other more,” Wildman said. “The team, as
a whole, is lacking in aggressiveness at times. All of the NCAC
games are going to be tough. We need to play hard all 90 minutes.”
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