St. Peter, Minn. – The Gustavus Adolphus women’s soccer team fell to St. Olaf College 1-0 on Saturday afternoon in a match at the Gustie Soccer Field. With the loss, Gustavus moves to 0-3-2 in the MIAC and 1-6-3 overall, while St. Olaf moves to 2-2-1 in the MIAC and 2-7-1 overall.
“We came out a lot stronger this game which is a huge improvement from some of our last games,” said head coach Laura Burnett-Kurie. “We were fighting hard the whole time. The wind was tough to play in, but I thought we kept the ball on the ground and moved it around quite well. We had some opportunities today, but they just didn’t go our way. They scored off a great shot, so it’s something where we did battle, but we just couldn’t find a way to equalize.”
The first half proved to be even and the match went into halftime knotted at 0-0. However, 11 minutes into the second half, the Ole’s Emily Sierakowski scored her first goal of the season on an unassisted boot past Gustavus keeper Caroline Olson (Sr., York, Penn.) to put St. Olaf up 1-0. That goal proved to be the difference maker, as neither team would score for the remainder of the game.
“The overall consistency was there for us today,” said Burnett-Kurie. “We’ve been pretty up and down so far this season, but today our energy was up the whole time and there weren’t any lulls really. Just continuing to find that consistency is going to make us better and better. We also brought several players off the bench again and they went in and played very well for us, so it’s great to see that those players are getting their time in and stepping up.”
St. Olaf held the advantage in shots taken on the day 11-4 and also held the advantage in corner kicks 4-2.
Olson suffered the loss for Gustavus and her record now stands at 1-5-3 on the season. She allowed just the one goal and made six saves on the day. St. Olaf keeper Ruth Hesse was awarded the win after needing to make just two saves.
Gustavus will be in action again on Wednesday when they travel to River Falls, Wisconsin for a 7 p.m. non-conference match against UW-River Falls.