Anisa Salazar
Sports Editor
The women’s soccer team faced Redlands on Wednesday night at Ortmayer Stadium and came away with their first win of the season 2-1, after being down at halftime.
It was also head coach Jeffrey Joyner’s first win with the team.
“I think (the win) just puts us in a great mental space,” Joyner said. “We’ve had a lot of close results, a couple that maybe were undeserved, but it was nice to see them work through something and get what they deserve out of the result.”
Both teams kicked off the game with eagerness to take charge. The back-and-forth game was not shy of aggression, with a total of 25 combined fouls throughout the game.
The crowd fed into the energy. With every touch on the field, there was a response in the stands. They were loud and it only made the game more intense.
The Bulldogs held possession for the majority of the first half, keeping the ball off of their half of the field. Most of their shots also came early as well.
In the first half, Joyner said that the Leopards were having difficulty getting the ball into pockets of space at the right time. Finding the right foot or the right person held them back when trying to move forward.
The Bulldogs’ only goal of the game finally came at the 41 minute mark, right before the end of the first half, leaving the Leopards to regroup in the locker room at halftime, down 1-0.
Senior defender Megan Sewell said that one of their struggles throughout the season has been settling into the flow of the game.
“There’s a lot of noise,” Sewell said. “It’s exciting, we’re excited to be here, we’re ready to go. But sometimes I think when a little adversity hits, I think we tend to freak out, … that is what we’re going to have to do better.”
Starting the second half of the game, the Leopards flipped a switch. They were fresh and determined to win the game, challenging and working to get to the ball first each time it was in the air.
“We came out flying in the second half,” senior defender Ryenn Zerbel said. “We started with possession of the ball, but as soon as we lost it, we won it right back, and I think that just shows our attitude going into the half. We were going to jump for every ball. We were going to go into every tackle, and we were going to win it.”
La Verne now dominated the game and kept the ball on Redlands’ half of the field. In scoring range, the Leopards forced their opponents into difficult positions for them to get the ball out of their box.
Leopards had 12 corner kicks in the game, 11 of them in the second half.
The aggression did not let up from either side. After a foul from the Bulldogs, the Leopards were set up for a free kick.
Junior defender Jordan Moody took the free kick, hit it into the box for senior midfielder Kailey Kolesar to take a touch, ultimately assisting Sewell for the tying goal of the game in the 68th minute of the game.
Sewell considers her height one of her strengths in situations like this.
“Whenever the ball is popping up in the air, it causes chaos, and it’s one of my favorites,” Sewell said. “I think I just had
the mentality to put it in the back of the net… It hit a weird part of my foot, but I don’t care…However you get it in, it doesn’t matter.”
The Leopards kept the momentum going with their next goal coming only four minutes later. Off of a corner kick by Moody, junior midfielder Sienna Cervantes met the ball with a header, putting the ball in the back of the net to take the lead, 2-1.
“My eyes were just on the ball,” Cervantes said. “‘I need to get the ball, I need to get my head on it, do whatever I can to get it in the goal.’”
Leopards finished out the game with strong defensive plays and held onto their lead, stopping the Bulldogs’ late attempts at trying to score another goal.
La Verne now has a Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference record of 1-2 and an overall record of 1-5-1. They will face Cal Lutheran at 7 p.m. Saturday at Ortmayer Stadium.
Anisa Salazar can be reached at anisa.salazar@laverne.edu.
Anisa Salazar is a senior communications major with a concentration in public relations. She is sports editor, social media editor and a staff photographer for the Campus Times. She previously served as a staff writer.
