The Cornell women’s soccer team (2-10, 1-3 Ivy) believes that it’s just inches away from a winning record for the season, and its latest play proves it.
The Red’s young offensive talent has taken pressure off the defense and has allowed the three-person backfield to solidify its game. Strikers Alicia Doolittle, Emily Knight and Sarah Olsen have turned the once unstable position into a surefire scoring machine. Doolittle’s hat trick over Vermont and lone goal against Harvard ignited a scoring frenzy which saw the trio score all eight of the Red’s goals in the past eight games.
“We’ve definitely been unlucky,” freshman midfielder Natalie Ravegno said. “For 99 percent of our games, we’ve come out and we’ve played extremely well,” she added. “We’re coming together as a team, and we’re already due.”
But for the Red to break out of its current skid of two consecutive overtime losses, it needs to jump out into the second half with its game strong. Its defense has allowed seven of its opponents’ twenty goals in the first eight minutes of the second half, including a devastator at 45:54 against Stony Brook last Tuesday. During the same time span, Cornell has been shut out.
“At halftime [coach] mentions it a lot, and he tells us to come out and fight because we let down a little bit,” Ravegno said.
With tonight’s 7 p.m. game at Army, the Red makes no secret about its plans to split its four-game series over non-conference opponents. before heading into the Brown match on Saturday. Army, at an even 7-7, hosts Cornell after losing its last three at home by a combined score of 9-2.
“I think that this game’s going to do a lot for us,” junior midfielder Andrea Madison said. “We’re going into this game strong, but we need to get another win under our belt. We need to prove to teams that we are capable at playing at a high level.”
“The only thing we know is that we want to win tomorrow,” Ravegno added. “We want to go out and fight. That’s about it.”
Archived article by Simon Chan