As another soccer season ended this past weekend, the Cornell women’s squad finished in fifth place in the Ivy League, the best finish it has seen in 20 years. Saturday’s match against Dartmouth (8-4-4, 1-3-3 Ivy), the last of the season, was a close game between two competitive teams. While the Red (9-4-4, 2-4-1 Ivy) ultimately fell to the Green, 0-1, the team has seen a successful season overall and has a lot to look forward to next season.
“For Saturday’s match at Dartmouth, I was disappointed in the result, and in our attacking performance for part of the time,” said head coach Patrick Farmer. “I didn’t think we played with the speed or aggression we had shown in training earlier in the week or that we expected for this match. We did better in the second half and maybe did enough to warrant a draw, but not enough to earn the win.”
Despite the disappointment in Saturday’s results, Farmer said he thinks the team had strong season, with many players of different ages contributing on the field.
“For the season overall, I think the team performed well,” he said. “We hit water marks for some statistical categories like last team to lose nationally, last team to surrender a goal nationally, maybe shutouts in a season, etc. We gained major contributions from each class and had a good spread of regular starters being three or four seniors, three or four juniors, three sophomores, two or three freshmen, which also bodes well for the future.”
According to Farmer, Saturday’s game was one filled with good pressure and possessions resulting in scoring opportunities and strong play on the field. Junior Dana Daniels nearly scored within the first minutes of the game on a free kick, and the Red saw other free kicks and corner kicks that created goal-scoring opportunities.
Despite the positives, the Red also had some areas in which it struggled. The women had trouble finishing and finding the back of the net.
“I think we were not as strong as we wanted in creating scoring chances and finishing goals from the chances we did create,” Farmer said. “We need to turn better possession and quality play into quality scoring opportunities and goals.”
However, Farmer saw a lot of consistently strong play from his team throughout the season. According to him, the team was able to be resilient in close matches. Besides one 2-0 loss, every loss since early September only came down to one goal.
“The team had to fight constantly to produce results for over two months and managed to win a bunch of matches where in the past, we had lost some of those,” Farmer said. “I think we possessed the ball better as a group than in the past three years, and I think we created some quality play for long periods of time, even in the few matches we lost.”