By Joe Pantorno, Sports Editor
The Hofstra University women’s soccer team has taken four of its last five games; it’s most recent victory coming in one of the more bizarre matches of the season, a 5-4 goal-fest against Harvard last Friday.
“After the game me and the coach of Harvard looked at each other and said that’s the craziest game we’ve ever been involved in,” said head coach Simon Riddiough. “It was very interesting.”
Harvard struck first in the seventeenth minute, the only goal of the first half, when freshman midfielder Meg Casscells-Hamby took struck one past sophomore goalkeeper Kylie Shuster, who made her second collegiate start.
“I saw a nervous goalkeeper, somebody who obviously understood the importance of this game,” said Riddiough. “Somebody who’s a little bit rusty, we haven’t put her in a real game for a long time. We almost prepared for a tough time unfortunately. But she came through it well, made some good saves and started commanding the team towards the end of the game.”
Hofstra was off to a flying start in the second half as senior forward Laura Greene headed in a corner with just two and a half minutes gone in the final 45 minutes.
The Crimson would regain the lead when junior forward Alexandra Conigliaro brought down a cross and sent it off the far right post and into the back of the net in the fifty-sixth minute.
The lead would not last long, as a mind boggling bombardment of goals from the Pride drastically altered the score line.
Just 13 seconds after Conigliaro’s goal, Greene netted her second, delivering a shot over Crimson goalkeeper Alexandra Millet to knot the score at two.
Less than four minutes later, Hofstra got its third in the form of a towering headed goal off a corner kick from senior midfielder Courtney Breen.
The blue and gold was not done yet when a minute and a half later, senior midfielder Brittany Butts found the back of the net to extend Hofstra’s lead to 4-2 in the sixty-first minute, a staggering three goals in five minutes of play.
Hofstra had to wait a bit longer for its fifth goal, eleven minutes to be exact, when Breen tallied her second of the match in the seventy-second minute for what seemed to be a safe 5-2 advantage.
“I’ve said it all year long for us to be successful we need Courtney Breen, Brittany Butts and Laura Greene to get goals,” said Riddiough. “They did so on Friday which was nice to see. Now we need to continue that.”
A header from freshman forward Erika Garcia found the roof of the net four minutes later to cut Harvard’s deficit to 5-3.
Things became even more uncomfortable for the Pride when Harvard pulled yet another goal back; Casscells-Hamby’s second of the match from 18 yards out.
It proved to be too little too late though as the Pride held on for the victory, Shuster’s first of her career in net, improving to 4-2 on the season while Harvard drops to 3-3.
