Ashford

The women's team struggles continued yesterday against Ashford. We are missing our defensive stopper Angela (Fenstermacher) Aulph and our checking forward, Sarah Beardslee both of whom we we lost to graduation last year. I think we have the talent to replace them, but there is no easy way to make up for experience - other than experience. Freshmen Shannon Delany from New Hampshire and Lisa Collogan from Des Moines, IA continued to show improvement and both will become significant players in future games. We have a quick turn-around with an important match against North Central in Chicago on Tuesday and then three days to work on many of the topics that we missed during preseason. It was nice to see Julie Muse get on the board by converting a PK in the waning minutes of the match even though the final score was unpleasant: 5-1 Ashford.
The men's team played very well in many aspects of our game against Ashford. We had an unfortunate "own goal" in the first half, but we did not back down even though the sun was pretty intense and we had just played a match the night before. Steven White tied the game off an assist from Andrew Solarek late in the second half, but we allowed Ashford to score the game-winner with seven minutes remaining. I still see a number of things that I like about this team. I think we have good team speed and our ability in the air is the best I've seen in my previous three seasons with the men. We look forward to working hard all of this week in preparation for our next match. - C