The SUNY Brockport women’s soccer team hosted the University of Rochester on Wednesday, Sept. 7. Although sophomore Maryalice Skutnik scored Brockport’s first goal of the season, the Golden Eagles fell to the Yellow Jackets 7-1.
Freshman goalkeeper Madeline McCrosson made her collegiate debut in the first half playing all 45 minutes. McCrosson got off to a strong start, recording two of her three saves in the first seven minutes.
From there, it was all the University of Rochester. Yellow Jackets junior would score three straight goals in a four-minute time span to virtually put the game out of reach and send the Golden Eagles into the break, down 0-3.
Graduate student Kayla Usborne was subbed into the game as goalkeeper for the second half. She recorded 4 saves in her 45 minutes of playing time. The University of Rochester scored three more goals before Skutnik’s goal with 12 minutes remaining. After a disappointing 0-1 loss and 0-0 tie, Skutnik’s goal was the first of the season for Brockport. Skutnik believes the goal is the highlight of her season.
“It felt great [to score the first goal of the season]!” Skutnik said. “I’m so excited I just want to hug everyone! I thought that I took a terrible touch, but it went in the right direction, and I saw the goalie was out and was like ‘just hit it over her and let it go in the net,’ and it did, so it worked out.”
Although she was disappointed that her goal came at a loss, Skutnik isn’t worried because she believes the team is treading in the right direction.
“Honestly, I think we’re playing well. We just need to keep connecting the passes and the attacking third is there, we just have to find a way to put the ball in the back of the net,” Skutnik said.
The 7-1 defeat is the most goals in a game that the Golden Eagles have allowed this season. Their record falls to 0-2-1. According to Coach Idland, he isn’t worried about where his team is at, saying that the first few games of the season usually resemble preseason games.
“We had one of those games where we’re far better than the team we matched up with, one where we’re neck and neck, and I look at this one and they’re just clearly on a different level than we are right now and we learned from all three of those, so it’s a good benchmark to shoot for,” Idland said.
As the team looks forward to the rest of the season, Idland says he has some positive takeaways from the first three games they can use to help them in the next one.
“We strung together plenty of good-looking attacking stuff in this game,” Idland said. “We didn’t have an answer for the quality of their players and attacks, but as far as our ability to string together attacking moments, we had plenty of them and we won’t see a level really higher than that this year. Now it gives us something to strive towards and see if we can have some success and get a result against that same level way down the line towards the end of the playoffs.”
The SUNY Brockport women’s soccer team will be back on the soccer field Wednesday, Sept. 14 to play against Keuka College.
