In a tie game with three minutes to play, junior Kay Sampson scored a header from 10 yards out to beat Indiana, giving Northwestern its second Big Ten win of the year.
That effort still wasn’t enough to impress coach Stephanie Erickson.
“I thought we were average,” Erickson said. “I thought we started off the game well, had a lot of chances and kept playing even when they didn’t go in. But once they scored, I thought we dropped off considerably. It’s not a soccer thing. It’s an emotional and psychological thing.”
After being shut out in four of its last six games, NU (7-6-1, 2-3 Big Ten) scored two goals against Indiana (5-10-0, 0-6) to pull away with a 2-1 win Sunday at Lakeside Field.
The Wildcats started the match aggressively on offense, showing the urgency to score that the team had focused on during practice. They recorded four shots within the first 20 minutes, with Jenny Dunn leading the team with two.
Dunn scored the first goal of the game in the 27th minute to give the Cats the lead. The senior forward shook off her defender and took a shot that crossed the goal line after hitting the inside of the crossbar.
It was her third goal this season and 16th career goal, moving her into NU’s top 10.
The goal was just the team’s second in five games.
“We’ve definitely, if you look at the results, have had some trouble getting the ball in the back of the net over the last couple games,” Dunn said. “And it’s not because we haven’t been getting chances. So it was good today to finally be able to convert two of our chances because that has been the focus of the last two weeks of practice.”
But the Hoosiers quickly tied the game. Indiana’s Devon Beach scored her fourth goal of the season in the 51st minute to knot the score.
The goal did more than just tie the game. It caused NU’s intensity to taper off.
“We definitely let the fact that they scored on us get to us a lot,” Dunn said. “That’s definitely something we have to work on, keeping our head up throughout the game and fighting through. It was tied; we should’ve kept playing.”
The two teams played for over 30 minutes without a goal, rallying back and forth.
Sampson, who made her first appearance in the game just 10 minutes earlier, ultimately broke the 1-1 tie with her header off of Sam Greene’s pass into the box.
“I thought Kay Sampson came in and changed the game for us, not because she scored a goal, but because she was battling in the air, getting the ball on the ground and clearly believed in a chance,” Erickson said.
But holding onto the lead was not easy for the Cats. With only a few minutes left on the clock, NU was forced to defend two corner kicks, one that resulted in an Edwards save.
“I was just like, ‘Get the ball out of the net, keep it out,'” Edwards said. “That’s always my mentality.”
After escaping with the win, Erickson said she knows the Cats have to adjust their mentality for similar situations. She said they cannot let setbacks, such as giving up the game-tying goal to the Hoosiers, keep them from playing hard.
“We need to be tougher, mentally tougher,” Erickson said. “It’s not soccer – soccer will keep getting better every day – but that’s not our problem. We need to be tougher mentally.”
