Hannah Knudsen '14 and the Cardinals improved to 2-0.
Most teams care more about games that they play against opponents in their own conference. This clearly doesn’t hold true for the Wesleyan women’s soccer team, who absolutely dismantled the visiting Eastern Connecticut State Warriors by a score of 3-0 this Wednesday, September 14.
Fresh off an overtime victory over NESCAC rival Bowdoin, it would not have been inconceivable for the team to suffer a letdown against a squad who had bested the Cardinals in their last meeting and hadn’t lost to Wesleyan in the past five contests between the teams. The last time Wesleyan beat ECST was in 1995.
With the stage and storylines set, Wesleyan charged out of the gate and never looked back, shattering the lingering doubts and erasing any thoughts of a letdown. 35 minutes in, a connection familiar to Cardinals fans put the Cardinals up 1-0.
Kerry Doyle ’14 earned her second assist of the year as she curled a ball into the box on a corner kick that found junior Laura Kurash’s head for her second goal of the year. Coincidentally, these two hooked up (along with Amy Toig ’14) for last game’s winner, making this their second in as many games.
Fortifying this lead would not prove to be a very tough task, as super-sub Kaylin Berger ’13 unleashed a hearty boot from about 34 yards out that clipped the cross bar on its way into the goal with two minutes left in the first half.
The second half proved to be more of the same for the red-hot Cardinals, who added one more goal for good measure. This one saw sophomore Doyle on the scoring end of the connection, as quad-captain Emma Nitzberg ’12 put a pass in from the left side that Doyle buried. This goal came just five minutes into the second half, which provided an almost unnecessary amount of security for the Cardinals.
For the second game in a row, the Cardinals out-shot their opponents and surpassed 20 shots on goal (with 21 this time around). They coupled a tenacious offense with a shut-down defense that featured quad-captain Hannah Stuckey ’12 as well as freshmen Hannah Stone and Brynn Hansson.
The goalkeeping has clearly been high-quality thus far for the Cardinals, who have only conceded one goal this year. This is due to the presence and undeniable ability of netminder Jessica Tollman ’15 who had seven stops against Eastern Conn.
The high-flying Lady Cards’ record now stands at 2-0. The last time they opened a season unbeaten in two games was 14 years ago in 1997, a campaign that saw the Cardinals end their year with a 6-7-1 record.
Hopefully this 2-0 start is indicative of better things to come. Repeating 1997’s sub-.500 record would be nothing short of disappointing, given the prodigious talent that this team has. The women hope to make it 3-0 when they return to NESCAC action this Saturday at Tufts.