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Winona State University celebrated their first match at home with a goal festival against the University of Minnesota, Crookston. The match ended with a 4-0 Warrior win. Winona State also played against Bemidji State University where they lost with a score of 2-1.
Before the match between Winona State and the University of Minnesota, Crookston, both teams were at the bottom of the standings of the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC). Neither team had a conference match win before this one, this season.
Both teams wanted to have a safe start in the first half and the game was going a little slow. But Warrior defender, Quinn Williams pushed the game in the ninth minute.
She scored her second goal of the season with a quick assist from the team captain Reanne Weil.
“I feel like our defense is super strong and they’ve been holding us up in a lot of these games,” Weil said. “Despite our scoring, our defense has always been super elite strength for us and I think that it shows how strong we are when we can get hitters off the corner kicks like that.”
The match started going slow after that as Winona State wanted to have it safe for their first home match. Defenders were clearing the ball from both sides with long passes, which gave the home side an advantage to make 14 shots for a goal. The Golden Eagles tried a couple of times to score but they failed because of the defense of Winona State.
Winona State’s coach, Jill Leib- forth was happy to see her defensive unit making a good comeback, where she was worried about filling up the positions.
The second half started with a clock malfunctioning. While the Warriors got a throw-in on the sideline of the Golden Eagle D-box, the assistant referee noticed that the clock stopped at 47 minutes and two seconds. The match was stopped until the clock was fixed.
Shortly after the Warriors got hungry for goals. They had 17 shots and ten of them were on target. The Golden Eagle goalkeeper, Abby Olsen made some outstanding saves as well.
The Goal Festival for the Warriors was started by Johanna Shubert who was in great shape from the last match. She made the first strike two minutes after the game started.
The Golden Eagles thought that the game would go slow after this, but Johanna had different plans in her mind. She scored her second goal of the night in the 58th minute.
“We wanted max points on this game very badly,” Shubert said. “We really were trying to turn our season around and I think everyone on this team has the fight for it.”
The entire second half consisted of home side striving for goals. Six corner kicks were a big example of that. Coach Leibforth was sitting on the bench in the first half but in the second, she stood up and began inspiring the players, which seemed to work for them like magic.
The last nail in the coffin for the Golden Eagles was put by the Warrior captain. Weil scored in the 70th minute assisted by Catheryn Hudak. Weil had five shots at goal, but the last one resulted in a goal.
Even after going 4-0, the Warriors did not stop attacking. The Golden Eagles started to play a little rough after the fourth goal. They had seven fouls in the second half and nine in total.
When the match had only ten minutes left, Winona State made ten substitutions including their goalkeeper. After that, the Golden Eagles got a chance to attack. The attack was taken down by the Warrior defenders.
While the defenders sent a back pass the new goalkeeper Anna Lundeen grabbed the ball in hand and gave a free kick to the guest. Lundeen corrected her mistake by saving the shot taken by Calderon Jacqueline.
In the second match of the weekend, Winona State was playing against one of the table toppers of NSIC. The confidence level they showed on the home ground was admirable and they were very goal oriented. In the tenth minute, they substituted Catheryn Hudak, who is a defensive midfielder for Mad- isson Watts a forward.
Five minutes after going in, Watts scored a goal for the home side. This is her first goal of the season. This goal put a lot of pressure on Bemidji State as they substituted seven players just ten minutes after it occurred.
Bemidji State made a comeback after changing their game tactics. Madeline Davey from Bemidji State scored an equalizer in the 28th minute. After a couple of minutes, Sylve Waters gave a 2-1 lead to Bemidji State.
Leibforth was well aware of the comebacks of Bemidji State as she mentioned before Bemidji State has been great in the past and they are still great. They know how to return back to the game and turn it around.
Because of the warm weather, both teams made 18 substitutions in total at the start of the second half, both teams playing a little aggressively. As a result, five yellow cards were shown and four of them were consumed by Bemidji State players.
The rest of this half went goalless, which resulted in a Bemidji State win 2-1. After this game Bemidji State stood third and Winona State on ninth in the NSIC points table.
