ST. PETER, Minn. – The Gustavus Women’s Soccer team defeated the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse 1-0 in their home opener Saturday afternoon at the Gustie Soccer Field.
A highly paced and physical game featured a scoreless first half. The Gusties were outshot by UW-La Crosse but strong defense led the Black and Gold to victory.
Ashley Becker (So., Farmington, Minn.) recorded her second consecutive and 13th career shutout. She also tied a career-high with nine saves.
“She’s a great force back there and is always super consistent,” Head Coach Laura Burnett-Kurie spoke about Becker. “It gives our team a lot of confidence moving forward. If we do have breakdowns, we have someone back there that’s going to step up in those moments. After she makes some of those big saves, we kind of feed off of it and it helps us out a lot.”
Chase Miller (So., Brooklyn Park, Minn.) scored her first goal of the season in the 86th minute of the second period, which proved to be the game-winner and lone goal of the match. Miller booted a free kick from the half-way line that took a bounce over the UW-La Crosse goalkeeper and into the net.
“It’s always an intense game with UW-La Crosse. They’re a good team and they like to play just like we do and we definitely get into it,” said Burnett-Kurie. “We kind of gutted it out. The wind helped in the second half, we were going against it in the first half, it certainly helped in the second half. We had some good players step up.”
The Gustavus win moves them to 2-0 overall on the season, while UW-Lacrosse is now 1-1 overall.
“We made better strides. It’s always an adjustment getting used to playing with each other again. Having a target on our back more so than we did last year and getting used to that is going to be big. We still have a long way to go so it’s just taking it game-by-game and practice-by-practice,” Burnett-Kurie said.
Gustavus returns to action September 7 as they travel to River Falls, Wis. to take take on the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.