Marquette University Athletics
Women's Soccer Opens Up Spring Season Action
3/29/2004 12:00:00 AM | Women's Soccer
DURHAM, N.C. ? The Marquette women's soccer team opened up its spring season playing a pair of matches on the campus of Duke University. Marquette lost the first match to the host school, 2-1, and quickly rebounded to play to a scoreless draw with Furman.
Both matches played were 70 minutes in duration as opposed to the typical 90 minute collegiate contests.
In the first match of the day, Marquette took a 1-0 lead on Duke in the first half when freshman Meghan Connelly scored a goal in the 17th minute. Sophomore Heather Goranson fed Connelly, who rocketed a shot from 22 yards out.
The Blue Devils, 14-7-1 in the fall season and an NCAA Tournament team, responded in the 51st minute to tie the match when the Marquette defense failed to clear a cross. Duke scored with five minutes left in the contest to pull out the victory on a ball that appeared to go out of bounds prior to the goal.
Just over an hour after the completion of the Duke contest, Marquette tangled with Furman. The Palladins came into the contest fresh, but couldn't take advantage of the situation. Both teams possessed well, and Marquette had its opportunities to score, but didn't and the game ended in a 0-0 tie. Furman is coming off a season in which it had a 15-5-2 record and fell just shy of returning to the NCAA Tournament for the third straight year, losing in its conference final.
"Overall, it was a good weekend for our team," head coach Markus Roeders said. "It was our first opportunity to test ourselves against other competition and evaluate our team's progress from spring training. Although winning is important, the priority is in our player's development and how that relates to the overall improvement of our team. We competed against two excellent teams and the challenge of playing back-to-back games with limited rest was handled well by our squad."
The Golden Eagles return to spring action on Sunday, April 4 taking on Louisville, Miami (Ohio) and Indiana in Bloomington, Ind.
