Womens' Soccer Cruises to First Win

By Josh Krinsky
Contributing Writer

The Wesleyan women’s soccer team started its season with an impressive win over St. Joseph’s College on Saturday.

The 3-0 score is not even indicative of how lopsided the game really was, as Wesleyan outshot St. Joseph’s by the unbelievable margin of 48-3.

While the women played very well, this type of win was by no means a surprise. St. Joseph’s always seems to be regarded as an easy win. Notwithstanding, it still felt good for the team to get a win under its belt.

"A win is a win is a win," said Head Coach Jeff Vagell. "We are a very young team, so this is the first collegiate win for a lot of our players, so we appreciate the game even more."

The team is indeed very young, consisting of only two upperclassmen and eleven frosh. The young players will have to step up to compensate for the loss of seven starters from a year ago, the largest loss of starters coach Vagell has ever experienced.

However, based on the dominating performance on Saturday, the team seems up to the task.

The first half saw the Cardinals display superb passing and positioning which led to numerous open looks at the goal. Their shots just would not fall.

Laurel Anderson ’01, who this year has been moved from sweeper to forward to generate more offense, made some beautiful crosses but the other forwards could not capitalize.

The midfielders and defensemen also played well, keeping the ball in the offensive zone for much of the half. Sophomore back Tumi Adebiyi did an especially nice job of this, using slick moves to maneuver around her opponents and set up her teammates.

The final seconds seemed to capture the half perfectly as Wesleyan moved the ball downfield, setting up a shot on the open net. The shot sailed wide as time expired.

Despite the dominating performance, the halftime score was tied at zero.

"It was incredably frusturating to be tied at the half after dominating it so thoroughly," said goalie Laura Nason ’00, who recorded her fourth career shoutout. "To our credit, we kept applying pressure and finally some shots found their way into the net."

The Cardinals continued their strong performance in the second half, except this time they were able to find the net. In the 54th minute, off a corner kick, midfielder and captain Kali Tomlin ’00 crossed the ball beautifully in front of the net to midfielder Abbie Boggs ’02, who headed it in.

The team was able to breath a huge sigh of relief as they were finally able to score.

The Cards continued to control the game but did not score again until captain Mariah Carbone ’99 shook free from the defense and rifled a shot on goal with 10 minutes left. The goalie managed to knock it down but it trickled past her for a goal.

With the game out of reach, Wesleyan tacked on one more insurance goal five minutes later as forward Jennifer Wallach ’02 scored her first career goal.

The goal was set up nicely by Tomlin, who recorded her second assist of the game. From that point the shutout was settled, and St. Joseph could not even muster a shot on goal the entire second half.

"I’m excited that two of our goals were scored by frosh," said Tomlin. "It shows that they’re a contributing factor and that we have such a strong young club."

Despite the fact that the Cardinals had trouble capitalizing on many of their scoring opportunities, coach Vagell was not overly concerned.

"For the most part we have a young group of forwards," he explained. "As the year moves along they will gain more confidence. Jen Wallach has already shown good confidence and hopefully someone will step up and score some goals."

Hopefully the team can mature quickly with their next game coming at Clark on Wednesday. Clark should prove to be a much tougher game than St. Joseph’s.

"We can beat them but we will need a very good team effort," Vagell said. "I think we are up for the task, we’ve got no superstars but a lot of real good players who don’t give in."