October 11, 2008

One Red Storm player fell to the ground with her hands over her head.

Another one just sat there, while a sea of Marquette players ran onto the field to celebrate.

The scene at Belson Stadium after last night’s women’s soccer game was emblematic of the frustration of a team who – after scoring their first goal in conference play all year – was just seven minutes from upsetting the class of the Big East.

Junior defender Vaila Barsley put the Red Storm on the scoreboard in the 73rd minute when she connected on a free kick from junior midfielder C.J. Ludemann. It was her team’s seventh goal of the year.

“Everyone performed well, we did everything right that we’ve been working on in practice and today just didn’t work out,” Barsley said after the 2-1 loss to the Golden Eagles.

“It’s not just the defense; it’s defending as a whole team. It’s just not the four in the back, it starts with the three up front and when they do a good job, it makes things a lot easier.”

In the 83rd minute the Golden Eagles won a corner kick and Becky Ryan was able to bend the ball past Red Storm keeper Rebecca Capinera to tie the score.

Then early in second sudden death overtime period, Marquette found the winner: a quck shot from Ashley Bares from the center of the box.

With the win Marquette improved to 4-1-1 in the Big East, while St. John’s remained winless in the conference with a record of 0-2-3.

“I thought it was a good performance from us,” head coach Ian Stone said. “I thought that we came back and played really strong. It was great that we were able to score the goal, but what we have to learn is that we have to play for every second of the game because teams in the Big East aren’t going to give up, there going to keep pushing hard, and obviously were pretty disappointed with the loss.”
St. John’s finished the game with ten shots. Ludemann led the way with three shots, while junior forward Kelly McConnell notched two.

In her first start of the season, senior goalkeeper Rebecca Capinera finished the game with four saves.

“Becca [Capinera] just had a really great week of practice, Kristin [Russell]’s been doing fantastic to,” Stone said. There wasn’t much to choose between the two of them. Just really it was a decision based on what was happening during practice and we basically went with Becca’s experience.”
Capinera’s experience showed in spurts throughout the game. At the end of the first overtime period, with only a few seconds left, she made a great save that kept the Red Storm’s hopes of a victory alive.

“We’ve been working really hard in practice all week, trying to get things right,” a tearful Capinera said. “We came out with the right mentality, we knew that Marquette was really good, they always fought hard. We know what we have to do; it’s just a matter of putting it right.”
Despite his team’s disappointment, Stone still remained optimistic about the team’s performance.

“We had a little bit of bad luck, I think that today we put a lot of things right because we attacked more as a team and that’s something that we’ve been working on,” he said. “We wanted to get our defenders forward as well and it’s something that we just have to keep persevering with, it’s frustrating, but at the same time I saw a lot of signs that I haven’t seen in a few weeks.”

“I think we have to have a bit of amnesia and forget this one, at least the results,” he added, “but at the same time I think the performance should give us confidence moving forward. Again, they don’t really deserve to lose this game, but we have to be able to finish this game off.”