Winona State University’s women’s soccer team lost both of their conference games this past week, starting with Minnesota State University – Mankato on Friday, Sept. 20 and losing 0-3 and ending with Concordia University on Sunday, Sept. 22, with a 2-4 loss.

The players came out for the first half of the Mankato game playing slow and not to their potential, according to senior midfielder Kendyl Keay.

“As much as we don’t want to admit it there is always that fear factor going into Mankato because they are always number one and they are such a good team they always are,” Keay said. “So I think that fear might have gotten into our head a little bit more than we would have liked it too.”

The Warriors were dominated by the Mavericks when it came to shots on goal. The Warriors had a total of five shots on goal compared to the Mavericks’ 19.

The team also struggled to get the ball behind the defensive backline of the Mavericks.

The Warriors tried to do this more because they have players with great speed on their attacking front lines, meaning their opponent’s defense has their back towards their own net, a nightmare situation for a defensive player.

Keay said she would want to be faster if the team could play Mankato again.

“[I would want us to] do what we know we are good at which is utilizing our speed up top and get those through balls to get into shooting range,” Keay said.

Keay said there were other things the team could have done better at in the game against Mankato.

“We took too many touches sometimes when it came to our feet we just didn’t get it off our foot as fast as we should have,” Keay said. “We didn’t look to attack as much, we just kinda kept playing it backward and trying to keep the ball too much instead of attacking and trying to score.”

When it came to Sunday, Winona State came out stronger in the first half according to head coach Matthew Kellogg.

“We came out strong. We were aggressive that is what we talked about in pregame. Beginning as the more aggressive team and that’s what I thought got us on the board early,” Kellogg said.

Courtney Wiencek, senior forward, scored the first goal one minute 46 seconds into the game.

It was not until the second half that junior Georgette Topalis was able to score the second goal for the Warriors.

The second half was when Concordia was able to score all four of their goals.

“Second half we came out and I think we really took the foot off the gas and [Concordia] were able to get themselves back in the game and they just never let go of it and we had to fight to get back in,” Kellogg said.

Kellogg said he did not see much improvement in getting behind the backline that the team was hoping to improve on for this game.

One thing Kellogg would like to change for their next game on Friday, Sept. 27 is their mentality.

“I think it is just about the mentality that we have to play 90 minutes tough,” Kellogg said. “Right now I think we are playing scared and we just need to shake it off it.”

He also said he wants to work on taking shots.

“We’ve got to stop giving up so many shots, too many shots and we have got to start taking more chances,” Kellogg said.