In the first game of the weekend for the Wilfrid Laurier University women’s soccer team, the Windsor Lancers came to town in hopes of taking one at University Stadium to collect another three points and a win.
The game began with Laurier playing well from the very start and taking control of momentum early on, but that would change quickly.
The Lancers, by the five-minute mark, would come close scoring via a three on two opportunity.
Come the 29-minute mark, they broke through as Jade Samping scored off an assist from Jazmin Martin. Consistently managing to break for opportunities with good passing and good usage of through balls, Windsor kept the pressure on Laurier for much of the first half.
“I think in the first half we didn’t compete. We weren’t prepared mentally to play,” head coach, Barry MacLean said. “I think the first five minutes we started off well and then after that we just stopped competing — stopped working — and at halftime we had a word about that.”
The second half would be better as the Golden Hawks finally managed to create opportunities for themselves on offense.
It seemed like those words worked because Laurier looked quite different in the second half in comparison to the first.
With the exception of a missed opportunity to go up 2-0 early in the second half, Laurier came out stronger, creating more opportunities.
They would finally manage to tie the game up at the 55-minute mark with Mackenzie D’Andrade scoring off an assist from Ellie Reid and from that point on, they carried momentum for much of the remainder of the game.
Even though it was a sight to see with both teams fighting to the finish, that final goal would turn into a pipe dream as the game would end in a tie, with both teams unable to capitalize late.
When asked about whether he thought they could have scored more, especially in the second half, Coach MacLean said, “I think we should’ve scored a couple of more goals but in the first half we gave up a lot of chances as well and it was very poor defensively and we didn’t take care of the ball when we were in possession. Second half, we were a lot better but I still was disappointed overall with the overall performance.”
Game two of the weekend would bring a whole new challenge in the form of the 5-1 Western Mustangs.
Western would come out strong and showed why their record is as good as it is from early on in the game.
They played strong defensively and didn’t show too much weakness as a unit. The Mustangs also managed to score early as Sabrina Denard would put one in unassisted at the 15-minute mark.
The first half would be rough going for the Golden Hawks as they came out “sluggish and slow” while their counterparts came out firing.
The second half would be better as the Golden Hawks finally managed to produce opportunities for themselves on offense.
Even though Laurier showed some ability to create, Western wasn’t giving up much as far as legitimate chances of scoring go.
With that turning out to be the story of the second half for Laurier, they came out on the losing end, falling 1-0.
The main thing that did stand out with this game was the level of physicality and lack of calls made. The refs really let the teams play more than usual instead of making the correct calls.
“No, I wouldn’t think it’s [hurt] the outcome. I mean, I agree with you that there were some questionable things but I don’t think it affected the result,” MacLean said.
Moving forward, the Hawks will have to regroup with back to back games next weekend versus the Algoma Thunderbirds.
“I think the level of competing for us is going to be our biggest thing. I haven’t seen where we’ve had 11 players were ready to fight from the beginning to the end of the game yet and if we don’t get that, it’ll be a short season.”
