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.”