Challenging road trip for Women's Soccer

September 14, 2017
A quick, two-game trip to Virginia didn’t go well for the Thunder: they lost one game and tied the other. The Thunder participated in the Shellenberger Classic at Lynchburg College over the weekend, where they took on Lynchburg College and Roanoke University.
In the first game, Roanoke scored on a header by Laura Garbarini with 18 seconds left in the first half. The Thunder responded quickly, pulling even 3:21 into the second half, as senior Morgan Whitman scored off a cross by Anna Saunders. Despite outshooting Roanoke 16-2 in the second half, the Thunder were unable to pull ahead, and the game went to overtime tied at 1. That score held up through two periods of overtime and the game ended in a 1-1 draw.
The next day, the Thunder returned to action against Lynchburg who ended the weekend ranked eighth in the nation by d3soccer.com. Once again, the Thunder found themselves trailing at the half, as Lynchburg rushed out to a 2-0 lead on goals by Sarah Hammock (26:21 in) and Kennedy Jakubek (35:09 in). This time, the Thunder were unable to find the equalizer, or even the back of the net, and the 2-0 score held up as the final.
The Thunder had their share of chances throughout the weekend. They outshot Lynchburg 11-9, and Roanoke 31-8 for a whopping total of 42-17 during the weekend. However, they were only able to put one of those shots in the back of the net. This has been a problem for the Thunder thus far this season: They scored on six of their 74 shots (8 percent) while their opponents scored on six of their 34 shots (17 percent). Yet both Wheaton and their opponents have averaged 1.5 goals per game this year.
Head coach Pete Felske was pleased with his team’s play overall, even if the result wasn’t what he wanted. “Considering the travel, the amount of injuries we have and the fact that Lynchburg is — in my opinion — as good as the top five or 10 teams in the country, I liked our effort,” he said.
The Thunder return to action on Friday, as they host Wartburg at 4:30 p.m.
All stats courtesy Wheaton Athletics.