Although the win does not count for the season, the Eastern Washington University soccer team cruised to a 6-2 victory over the University of the Fraser Valley on Aug. 9 at home.
“We started both halves with a lot of young kids on the field,” head soccer coach Chad Bodnar said. “We started well and strung a lot of stuff together after only having four days at camp. We saw a lot of positives out of today, we have to clean up giving up two goals in a minute, but we need to learn to snap out of it and get back if we give something up. With it being so early and with all of the new players we have, I thought it was a great outing for us.”
The Eagles got off to a quick start, scoring three goals within the first 10 minutes of the match. Alyssa McKenzie kicked the match off by scoring in the second minute from an assist by McKaley Goffard following a corner kick delivered from Mya Elder-Hammond.
Shortly after, Sariah Keister found Maddie Morgan off a cross in the sixth minute to mark the second goal of the match. The third goal came from Elder-Hammond in the ninth minute following a deflection near the post.
“We had great cohesion to start the game after only a few days of practice,” Bodnar added. ”We had young players playing in their first college game and I thought we gelled and that they gelled well with our older players. It was a bright day for us.”
Following the goals, the Eagles had seven more shot attempts in the first half with three of them being saved by Joven Sandhu of Fraser Valley. Kelsee Winston and Ryann Rydeen both had one save, securing a first-half shutout for the Eagles.
Returning from halftime, the Eagles had three shot attempts before managing to score their fourth goal from a header by Keister. They wasted no time scoring as the assist came from Taylor Matheny in the 53rd minute.
A few minutes later, Morgan scored her second goal of the match in the 60th minute. With traffic in the box, the ball fell to her feet and the shot deflected and landed in the bottom right corner past the keeper.
In the 67th minute, Keister scored her second goal of the match. She received a through ball close to the midline and dribbled towards the goal for a shot in the bottom left corner.
The Cascades responded in the 70th minute following a shot from the top of the box by Bryana Buttar. Fraser Valley scored its second goal in the 71st minute of play from Simi Lehal with the assisted cross by Brittney Zacharuk, cutting the score to 6-2.
“We’re still trying to put the pieces together and see where people fit, and we got a lot of that done today,” Bodnar said. “We want to clean up some things, like defending set pieces, and how we defend our own defensive thirds. Some of our players that played a lot for us last year were a little dinged up today and we still did well, I saw a lot of good things.”
Eastern’s overall record remains 0-0-0 as this exhibition match will not count towards the regular season record. The match served as an exhibition for Fraser Valley as well.
The Eagles outshot their opponent 19-14 with 11 shots on goal verses Fraser Valley’s seven. Both Eastern Washington and the Cascades took eight shots in the second half but the Eagles managed to stay on top of the scoreboard. The teams were even with seven corner kicks and five saves.
Sariah Keister and Maddie Morgan each scored two goals and took three shots and Keister tallied an assist. Mya Elder-Hammond and Alyssa McKenzie both had one goal. Taylor Matheny and McKaley Goffard also had one assist. Ryann Rydeen and Hadley Bezon each had two saves in the match while Kelsee Winston recorded one.
Eastern Washington faces Grant MacEwan University at home on Aug. 17 at 1 p.m. at the EWU Soccer Field. This concludes their final exhibition match with the regular season set to begin at Nevada on Aug. 22.
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