Women‘s soccer bounced back from its loss to Penn State to earn a convincing 4-0 decision over Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne Tuesday at Old College Field.
The two teams traded scoring opportunities and played an evenly matched game the first 15 minutes.
Momentum soon swung the Spartans’ way as junior forward Tiffany Laskowski had the game’s first score, putting one past IPFW goalkeeper Rachel Poor at 17:17.
From that point on MSU owned the match, outshooting the Mastadons 18-2 the first half and 27-7 for the game.
“It was one of those games where it was easy for our team to overlook them.” Spartan head coach Tom Saxton said. “In the beginning we did some things we shouldn’t have done, but we kept working hard, things settled down and we started to play really well.”
The score remained unchanged until the end of the half when Laskowski broke downfield with the ball. Her one-on-one shot was blocked, but freshman midfielder Erin Konheim got the rebound and put the ball in the back of the net with just 1 second to spare, giving MSU a 2-0 lead at the break.
“That goal was really exciting,“ Konheim said. “I think it gave us a lot of momentum going into the half. We were struggling at the start and the 2-0 lead definitely helped to lift us.”
After the half the Spartans took the field by storm, scoring their next two goals five minutes into play, just 36 seconds apart. Konheim chipped in a cross from freshman forward Emma Harris for the first goal, and junior midfielder Michelle Perun booted one in between the posts for the game‘s fourth score.
Sophomore goalie Erin Carlson was challenged little. She earned her first shutout in net for MSU as the Mastadons could muster just seven total shots in the match.
“The defense was really important, they played as good as they always have,” Carlson said. “They deserve part of the credit for the shutout because they did a good job keeping the ball away from me.”
MSU next takes the road for a set of weekend games. The first will be played Friday against Indiana (7-3-3, 3-1-2). A 6 p.m. kickoff is scheduled.
