The Cougars, 4-3-1, out shot Cloud County 13-2, but could have had a lot more goals as the WNCC women dominated play from start to finish.
“Our team did okay for the team we played against,” sophomore Terri Huntington said. “We have a long ways to go though and we need to pick it up a lot.”
WNCC’s Alicia Ropkin echoed Huntingon’s observation of the game.
“We played a fair game with good possession, but we needed to take advantage of the gaps in the defense,” the sophomore said. “We need to play to our full ability even against lesser skilled opponents.”
The one thing the contest did was give the Cougar women an idea what they need to work on before next month’s regional tournament.
“We missed a lot of open shots to make the score better, but it was a nice game to see what we have to improve on,” sophomore Andrea Ardito said. “
Cloud County, however, made things interesting early, scoring the opening goal with just under two minutes gone in the match. Beatriz Castillo scored as she took a rebound off of Cougar goal keeper Andrea Burger for the 1-0 lead.
The goal woke the Cougar offense up as they scored four times in the first half. Jamie Gastille started things when she fed Ashley Quintana a perfect pass, who found the back of the net with the tying goal with 37:18 to play.
The Cougars took the lead 10 minutes later as LeeAnna Paxton scored off an assist by Keah Brost. Four minutes later, Quintana delivered Gastille a pass to put the Cougars up 3-1.
WNCC added one more goal before half as Shaylee Williams earned the assist on a goal by Ana Jacobo with 4:27 to play.
The Cougars added just one goal in the second half as Huntington delivered a pass to Taylor Johns with 16:43 to play.
The Cougars managed 12 shots on goal in the first half and nine in the second half to out shot the Thunderbirds 12-2.
Cloud County goal keeper Kadie Kutschka registered 13 saves, while Burger had just one save.
WNCC coach Todd Rasnic said he will take the win, but wasn’t overly excited with the performance.
“I was, to say the least, disappointed with the performance of the ladies. The ladies certainly had many, many opportunities to put the ball away and didn’t do it,” he said. “We were just not on our shooting today. Hopefully, it is not a cycle. We have a big tournament coming up this weekend at CU and we will see how the ladies bounce back after this game and put together some high pressure matches.”
Another reason for the scoring woes, Rasnic said, is that he played got everybody into the match in some capacity.
“We did do a lot of different things in the match,” he said. “We played a lot of our subs today and got everybody a chance to play in the game. So, that had something to do with it as well.”
WNCC will next be in action Friday through Sunday at the CU Boulder tournament, where they will play the University of Nebraska Club team among others.
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