Just when the Northwestern women’s soccer team seemed unbeatable, along came a weekend on the road.
NU’s trips to Minnesota (5-5-1, 2-4 Big Ten) on Friday and to Wisconsin (6-6-1, 2-4) on Sunday proved to be too much to handle, as the Wildcats ended a three-game winning streak with two heartbreaking 2-1 losses.
In the three games prior to the road trip, NU played outstanding defense, giving up just one goal.
But the momentum would not carry into Minneapolis.
NU struck first against the Gophers when senior Aileen Guiney’s dead-ball kick sailed passed Minnesota goalkeeper Karli Kopietz in the 12th minute of the match.
The Gophers responded right away, scoring just three minutes later and again in the 39th minute to round out the scoring.
Despite spending most of the last 20 minutes of the game on Minnesota’s side of the field, NU was unable to score the equaliser.
“On Friday, the whole team was very flat and very off, and we weren’t doing anything to compensate for the fact that the team was playing so flat,” said coach Jenny Haigh. “It wasn’t about the defense. It was about the whole team.”
Determined to break even for the weekend, the Cats headed to Madison, Wis., on Sunday looking to go 3-2 in conference play.
The game was scoreless until the 71st minute, when freshman Tori Bohannon headed the ball into Wisconsin’s net off of a corner kick from Guiney. The goal would prove to be the day’s only shot on goal for NU.
But the lead was short-lived, as Wisconsin’s Molly Meuer evened up the score just six minutes later with a 30-foot shot. Meuer’s kick went right past NU goalkeeper Whitney Jones.
The game appeared to be headed for overtime, but Wisconsin first-team All-Big Ten forward Jenny Kundert made that unnecessary in the 88th minute by bending a free kick past the wall and into the right corner of the net.
Although NU (6-5, 2-3) dropped to the bottom half of the Big Ten standings, Haigh said the team was much more impressive in Sunday’s game than in Friday’s loss to the Gophers.
“They were just really different games,” said Haigh. “We came back strong [on Sunday against Wisconsin]. We just made a couple of mistakes toward the end, and we got too relaxed.”
The Cats felt that they may have been ill-prepared for Minnesota following a three-game streak in which spirits were soaring. Both Bohannon and Guiney said the team’s struggles reflected its practices the week before.
“We didn’t have a good week of practice at all,” Guiney said. “I think we took Minnesota for granted, and maybe we thought we were in a position that we weren’t really in.”
With home games against nationally ranked Penn State (10-2-2, 4-1) and Ohio State (8-1-2, 2-1-2) coming up this weekend, Haigh said NU’s current 2-3 conference record is no indication of what is to come.
“It’s totally up in the air,” Haigh said. “We knew going into the season that every team would play with a high level of competition, and that’s what we saw in the first five conference soccer games.”
