By Victoria Mickens – STAFF WRITER
The Hofstra women’s soccer team found victory in Washington, D.C on Saturday against Georgetown University, advancing to the NCAA Tournament second round for the first time since 2010.
The combination of goals from freshman defender Madeline Anderson, and senior forward Leah Galton brought the game to overtime, and crucial saves by substitute goalie Ashley Wilson in PKs clinched the victory.
The Pride will play the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers University who in their first round game, defeated the Knights of Farleigh Dickinson in a 1-0 victory. The Pride, though, may have to go into that game with Galton, who went down with an injury.
“[This game] was awesome,” said head coach Simon Riddiough. “To battle and dig in deep in overtime was impressive.”
It was a scoreless first half of this first round contest between the Pride and the Hoyas. But in the second, at the 46:40 mark senior Jeannine Molleda’s corner kick assisted Anderson in scoring her fourth goal of the season. Although, Georgetown had several scoring opportunities they just could not seem to get the ball past Pride junior goalie Friederike Mehring, who made eight saves the entire game. The Hoyas did, nevertheless, manage to answer back with goal from Georgetown grad student, Melissa Downey at the 54:51 mark.
In the next fifteen minutes of the game, the Pride would look to reclaim their lead and that they did. At the 77:05 mark, Galton was tripped up in the box, and would send home a penalty kick as a result, making it 2-1.
Yet, junior forward Grace Damaska, who had taken five of Georgetown’s ten shots on goal, eventually sent one past Mehring and tied the first round of the NCAA Tournament 2-2 ultimately sending the contest into overtime.
Georgetown had a few scoring opportunities in both overtimes but Mehring was on top of things and made several saves by Damaska and Downey. Hofstra struggled to even get a shot off during the extra time.
Then within the final two minutes, Galton went down on the pitch with an apparent leg injury. It took several minutes for her to get up, and she had to be helped off. There are no updates on her condition as of yet.
In the penalty kicks round, both teams made their first two shots, but in round three, Pride’s backup goalie Wilson sent away a shot, followed by an Agudelo core, another Hoya miss, and a Kristin Desmond score to lock up the win for Hofstra.
“[Mehring], to be fair, had a very very good game,” said Riddiough. “But Ashley’s been fantastic in PKs, the girls respect her as a PK stopper. We watched Georgetown’s PKs against [their previous opponent] Providence. She analyzed them, she evaluated them.”
The Pride’s second round meeting with #9 Rutgers will be on Friday at 7 p.m. Hofstra faced the Scarlet Knights earlier this season, falling 1-0.
