The Lions are continuing their strong drive into the second half of the season with victory after victory. With each week the team looks stronger, hopefully on their way to a New Jersey Athletic Conference title.
The first game of the week came on Wednesday at Gettysburg College. The Lions took on the Bullets in a game that was a hard fought nail-biter from the beginning. Sophomore goalie Kendra Griffith had a great four saves in goal and held off the Bullets on the way to a 1-0 victory for the College.
The team was led by junior midfielder Sloan DePiero, who had four shots on goal, while senior forward Allyson Anderson and many others showed some stellar offense. The Lions had a total of 10 shots on goal.
However, the only goal that was scored for the College was the winning goal by senior midfielder Amy Van Dyk. Sophomore forward Korrie Harkins provided the assist and Van Dyk sent the winning kick flying. This was Van Dyk’s first goal of the season, and notably one of the most important to the team.
The team’s defense had completely dominated the Bullets, allowing only six shots to the Lions’ 18.
The second game of the week came at home against William Paterson University on Saturday. The Lions went into this NJAC contest ranked highly at No. 23.
The 3-1 victory for the Lions began with just 14 seconds into the game. As soon as it began, junior forward Katie Lindacher took the ball straight down the field and assisted DePiero on her fourth goal of the season.
The next goal came with 10 minutes remaining in the first half. Harkins was assisted by senior forward Katie Landrigan for her third goal of the season.
The Lions struck again at 54:13 in the second half. Van Dyk assisted DePiero with a ground pass, who scored her second goal of the game. Griffith went the entire game in goal and only allowed one goal. She had three perfect saves.
In total, the Lions had 10 shots on the Pioneers’ goal while the latter had only four on the Lions’. It was another game in which the offense and defense both showed up and dominated.
The rest of the season looks to be an even greater challenge for the team, but they are confident they can continue to fight until the end.
“The second half of the season is more of the tougher teams we will be going against,” Lindacher said. “I’m almost glad we got that one loss out of the way because now it is just fueling us for the rest of the season. Our overall goal is always a national championship in the NCAA tournament, so now is when we bunker down and focus one game at a time, take on the NJAC, and do what we need to win.”
The Lions have another tough week coming up with a game at Johns Hopkins University on Wednesday at 6 p.m. and a home game against Kean University on Saturday at 1 p.m.
