The Cornell women’s soccer team (2-3) dropped two games this weekend, failing to stop the potent offenses of No. 23 Rutgers on Friday and San Diego State on Sunday.
The Scarlet Knights’ offensive attack overpowered the Red throughout the game, firing 18 shots compared to the Red’s four. Rutgers went on to win, 2-0. Similarly, in the game against SDSU, the Aztecs out-shot the Red, 19-10, and issued Cornell its third loss of the season.
Sophomore goalkeeper Meghan Kennedy’s eight saves against SDSU — in addition to her seven against Rutgers — increased her season total to 20. The Red also created a number of strong chances on offense despite not being able to finish.
Senior forward Dana Daniels, who narrowly missed a shot in the 40th minute of the SDSU game, said she knows there is a fair amount the Red needs to work on.
“For both Rutgers and [SDSU], the team worked really hard on and off the ball,” she said. “However, in both games we needed to improve our speed of play and passing.”
Such skills will improve over time, and out-of-league games like this are essential practice for Ivy League competition, which begins on September 23 against Columbia.
“Every game is important to helping the team build confidence and point out where we need to improve,” Daniels said. “The non-conference games help us prepare for the Ivy League.”
Each game serves as a lesson that the Red can learn from as the women move towards reaching their goal of finishing the season with a winning record.
“The team plans to work on our speed of play and passing in order to have a winning season,” Daniels said.
Head coach Patrick Farmer agreed, commenting that a lack of passing contributed to the loss to the Aztecs.
“For us to be effective — we don’t have a lot of real world class stars running around — we need to pass the ball and share the ball better,” Farmer said to Cornell Athletics after the SDSU game. “I didn’t think we did that well today.”
Last season, the Red finished 9-4-4, marking the first time the team had finished with a winning record since 2002.
This record is why Daniels emphasized that “a big goal for the team is to come out of this season with a winning record.”
Farmer and his team know what they have to do to improve, and get back to the level they played at last year.
“For a couple days here we’ll work on passing the ball at pace in the front half of the field and see if we can get back to controlling games in the front half,” Farmer said to Cornell Athletics.
The Red looks to earn its first home win of the season this Thursday against Seton Hall. Play begins at 7 p.m.
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