The Ottawa University soccer teams had different outcomes at the Sept.18 games, as the women won 1-0 and the men lost 4-3 to Central Methodist University.
The Lady Braves beat CMU thanks to a penalty kick scored by sophomore Morgan Trupp after junior Jasmine Robledo got fouled in the penalty box.
CMU began the game strongly.
“They attacked us really quickly in the beginning of the first half,” junior Autumn Surage said. “I thought we were going to be playing down again. We typically go down in the beginning of the game and then try to catch up.”
Starting slow has been one of the struggles the Lady Braves have faced this year, leading them to trail most of the game.
“The whole season we’ve been having issues starting the game off strong,” junior Jordan Tapia said. “We’ve had slow starts and end up getting scored on a couple times. We dig ourselves in a hole and then we have to come back and we usually can’t get out of it.”
The Lady Braves lost their first game last week- end in Iowa because of this same reason.
“Last weekend we lost 2 to 1 to Morningside College,” Tapia said. “We were down 2 to 0 and we came back in the last 20 minutes of the game, but we still lost.”
The next day, coach Mark Gordon switched his tactical order to a 4-3-3 formation, which helped them to beat Briar Cliff University 3 to 0.
For this game, they repeated the same strategy.
“Today we started in that same 4-3-3 shape and we stayed there the entire game. It seems to work better for us,” Tapia said. “You can just tell the difference, that we know how to play this shape a lot better than the other one we were using before.”
Surage agrees with Tapia. “We’re playing a lot better. We’re connecting more,” Surage said.“In this game we connected better at top. Our movement was better and our passes were more accurate.”
After Trupp’s goal, the lady braves dominated the rest of the game.
“We should have scored a couple more times, but we missed,” Tapia said.
CMU beat the Lady Braves 4-0 last year.
“They killed us,” Tapia said. “We started that game slow and we weren’t in it. A couple of our starters were hurt. We were down 3-0 in the first 15 minutes of that game. “
Tapia said she thinks the other team was a little bit cocky because of that.
“They came out kind of slow,” she said.12