The No. 3 Seed LU women’s soccer team fell to High Point 3-1 in the first round of the Big South tournament in Farmville on Saturday night.
The game began well enough for the Lancers, who finished the season at 9-9-2. Some pushing and shoving in the box in the sixth minute on the Panthers’ part led to an opportunity for Kelsey Pardue to score on a penalty kick, which she did, striking a clean effort into the left side of the net.
Longwood retained momentum from that goal for most of the half, until High Point began to control possession with crisp passes. The Lancers looked like they would head to the locker room with a 1-0 lead until a handball in the box gave HPU’s Taylor Parker a penalty kick chance of her own. Her shot hit the crossbar, but LU goalie Shelby Hall fell to the turf after her initial save attempt and didn’t get up in time to save Sarah Sermonet’s rebound, and it was tied with 22.8 seconds left in the half.
“We weren’t pressuring them [and] we weren’t keeping the ball,” Head Coach Todd Dyer said of the end of the first half. “When they got that penalty kick late in the first half, that really shook us up a little bit. We tried to talk about it and tell them to just brush it off … even the beginning of the second half, they got us back on our heels a little bit … They played to their strengths and we had a hard time dealing with that.
“I didn’t have a problem with the call and conceding the penalty; the problem I had was that we spent the last 15 minutes of the first half in our own end of the field and getting pushed back against our own 18.”
High Point picked up where they left off in the second half, dominating most facets of the match. They had little to show for it until the 64th minute, when Brooke Lisson’s free kick found Jenny Marshall, who headed it in, giving High Point their first lead.
“We’ve got a pretty young team, and it’s tough to turn that [momentum] around sometimes when it’s working against you like that, but again, it’s a tournament game, crazy things happen,” Dyer said.
Marshall scored again in the 88th minute, this time with a shot from well over 30 yards out, to wrap up the scoring and clinch an appearance in the semifinal.
Dyer said, “The big thing is that the first time we played them we were able to pressure them early defensively. When we didn’t have the ball, we were able to get to them quickly and not allow them time and space to play. It just didn’t quite happen [today].
“We finished third in the league for the second time in a row. I think we’re one of the better teams in the conference, meaning top third. I think we’re good enough to win it. I think we were last year; I think we were this year. For whatever reason, it’s just not our time … hopefully this [game] sticks and resonates a little bit and we use it to win the whole thing next year.”
It was the final game in the Longwood careers of Pardue, Hall, Chelsea Walter and Dana Wallace.
In related news, five players were named to all-Big South teams on Monday. Pardue was named to the first team, Gina D’Orazio was named to the second team and all-freshman team, Alana Mackey received an honorable mention, Kelsey McDonald was placed on the all-academic team and Amanda Spencer was named to the second team, all-freshman team and was also named the conference’s Freshman of the Year.
