Women’s soccer shut out by Eastern Washington despite dominate performance

Eric S. Torres

Sacramento State women’s soccer (5-8-0) was shut out by the Eastern Washington (5-5-0) Sunday afternoon by a final score of 2-0 despite dominating on offensive.

It was yet another tough break for the Hornets women’s soccer team as Eastern Washington’s freshman forward Caylah Lunning got the Eagles on the board seven minutes into the game. Lunning’s goal was kicked high out of the reach of Sac State senior goalkeeper Kimberly Mata’s grasp.

in spite of the loss, Sac State freshman forward/midfielder Amanda Mielke felt that the team played an exceptional game.

“Overall, I feel like we performed good, we just didn’t put away our opportunities, we had so many, we had 21 shots, we just didn’t finish any of them,” Mielke said. “We need to finish opportunities, we can do everything up to that point and we just got to finish them.”

Although the Hornets got the loss today, it was a solid performance all-around for the team nonetheless. The women had opportunities to put the ball in the net, however Eastern Washington’s senior goalkeeper Nathalie Schwery kept the Hornets at bay with seven saves in the game improving her saving percentage to .766 on the 2014 season.

Late in the 71st minute, the Eagles senior defender/forward Katie Cashman received a red card and was ejected from the game because of a hard kicking foul on Sac State sophomore forward Adaurie Dayak. Dayak was a little slow to get up at first, however she would later return back into the game.

Sac State coach Randy Dedini said that the rest of conference play moving forward is very important in determining who gets into the Big Sky Conference tournament.

“We got to win all of them now, I think in order to make the playoffs, unfortunately we’re still mathematically alive,” Dedini said. “We just have to look at it one game at a time and if we can win a couple next weekend, go on the road, we just win it one game at a time.”

Sac State freshman forward Kylee Smith seemed a little frustrated that the team did not get the victory today against the Eagles.

“We played good, but I was just disappointed that we didn’t finish, bottom line is we need to finish,” Smith said. “We need to win six games but we just need to take it one game at a time and hopefully just step-by-step work our way up.”

Dedini states that starting off slow has contributed to the team’s recent 0-4 conference start.

“I thought we came out again a little bit soft and slow, and they got a goal, we battled back, we started playing really good soccer, creating a lot of chances in the second half,” Dedini said. “Plenty of chances to tie it up, we kept pushing couldn’t get the goal, had many quality chances to score.”

The Hornets will continue conference play at home as they will host Weber State on Friday, followed by Idaho State on Oct. 12.