Sports

Women soccer ready for home matchup against Northeastern

After playing five of their first six games on the road, Boston University women’s soccer is coming home to play Northeastern University Thursday at 7 p.m.

This game against Northeastern will be the first of four straight games that the Terriers (0-5-1) will be playing at home. One of those opponents will be the first Patriot League game for the Terriers on the season; it will be against American University (3-3).

The last game that BU played Sunday was a 1-3 loss at the hands of the University of Connecticut. After the game, BU head coach Nancy Feldman said the team is giving up too many goals to allow the team to stay in the game.

“We can make a lot of excuses,” Feldman said, “but the bottom line is that if we give up goals that the other team doesn’t necessarily do magical things to create … we’re gonna struggle.”

The Northeastern Huskies (2-3) have had a slow offense to start the season. Aside from putting up four goals in a 4-1 win against Harvard University (2-1) on Aug. 30, the Huskies had scored one goal in two games and have been shut out twice. 

These shutouts have come from their most recent two games, where Northeastern was shut out 0-2 by Florida Gulf Coast University (2-2) Sep. 8, and a 0-1 shutout from the hands of Boston College (6-0) Sep. 5. 

One player that has been leading the charge for Northeastern is Husky forward Chelsea Domond. She has scored two of the team’s six goals of the season and has made the most shots for Northeastern this season at 14. Freshman goalkeeper Angeline Friel has started the last three games in net, posting a 1.33 goals against average. Redshirt sophomore Megan Adams, who started the first two games, matches Friel with a .667 save percentage and holds the slight edge with a 1.00 goals against average.

Opposing Domond and the redemption-seeking Northeastern offense are the Terrier goalkeepers junior Amanda Fay and sophomore Morgan Messener. They have been putting out the most work in front of the net in all of the Patriot League, ranking first and second respectively in saves per game throughout the whole conference. Their respective saves per game of 6.67 and 6.00 average to 6.335.

Last year, junior forward Anna Heilferty and sophomore midfielder Taylor Kofton were in first and second place in goals scored for the Terriers; Heilferty had six goals and Kofton had four goals. Although there have been only two goals on the season so far for BU, this Terrier duo has already been putting the most pressure on the net so far, with Heilferty having nine shots and Kofton having eight shots. 

BU is 12-7-1 all-time against its crosstown rival, but has dropped five of the last six matchups.Furthermore, three of the last four contests have been one-goal games. 

Down the stretch, Feldman is going to continue to work with the coaching staff to continue to search for the answers on how to not let opponents take games out of reach.

“Someone’s going to have to put us in the best position in games,” Feldman said. “Whether we play on the road against non-conference teams or at home against non-conference teams or when we start in two weeks against conference teams, we’ve still got some things to figure out.” 

 

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