Soccer sweeps opening tourney

The GCSU soccer team hit the road this past weekend, opening their regular season in Savannah, and shut out both teams they faced, giving the Bobcats a 2-0 record to commence the season.

The Bobcats played their first game of the weekend Friday and shut out Queens University of Charlotte, N.C., 2-0.

GCSU and Queens both started out playing well. However, 20:41 into the first half, a shot from senior midfielder Daria Owen found its way into Queens’ net, with the assist from sophomore midfielder Karen Bonilla. The play gave Owen the fifth goal of her career and Bonilla her fourth assist.

In the second half, the Bobcats continued to dominate when in the eight-first minute of the game, junior forward Jessica Newland gave GCSU a two-goal cushion when she scored an unassisted goal. This gave the Bobcats their 2-0 lead over Queens.

“I executed my runs well, but without the passes from my teammates it wouldn’t have meant anything,” Newland said. “We had great team chemistry for our first game and it was nice to see everyone out connecting passes.”

On the defensive side of things, the Bobcats junior goalkeeper Jessica Binkowski was able to make three saves to prevent Queens from scoring any goals.

GCSU’s determination did not let up when on Sunday, the ‘Cats went up against Florida Southern College and shut out the Moccasins 1-0.

The game jumped into action when senior forward Jamie Nevin, just eight minutes into the first half, scored the only goal of the game, assisted by sophomore forward Megan McAlpin. The play gave Nevin her 13th career goal, the highest total on the current squad.

“We came out strong but at the end we were battling defensively to keep them from scoring,” Nevin said. “Overall we fought them off, everyone worked really hard and I’m glad we got the win.”

Binkowski continued to play well as goalkeeper by making four saves to stop the Moccasins’ attempts to score.

Due to her hard work, Binkowski was selected as GCSU’s athlete of the week on Monday. Formerly a defender, Binkowski recorded two shutouts in her first two games as goalkeeper. She made three saves in the game against Queens and four saves against Florida Southern. This was the first athlete of the week award given this season.

“I was really excited about it,” Binkowski said. “But I can’t take the full credit for it because if I didn’t have my team in front of me defending like they did, I wouldn’t have been able to be named athlete of the week.”

The Bobcats are at home for the first time this weekend as they host the Bobcat Shootout Tournament against Catawba College on Friday at 8 p.m. and Florida Technical College on Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

“We’re going to have to take care of the ball more and as a result, will generate more scoring chances,” head coach Juan Pablo Favero said. “I think we have to keep building on the good defensive effort, shape and posture that the team has.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 4 2009. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry