Ben Martindale, Sports Editor
VCU women’s soccer lost their home debut 4-0 against North Carolina State University at VCU Athletic Village on Aug. 16.
The match comes on the heels of a 4-1 loss to Elon University in the team’s season opener earlier this week.
“I think a lot of things went right for us because we’re choosing the hard path,” said VCU head coach Lauryn Hutchinson. “We’re not choosing the easy path. We could come out there and bomb the ball, we could put ourselves in a position where we’re just trying to win a match, but at the end of the day we want to prepare for conference, so we choose the hard route.”
The teams battled back and forth in the early minutes with neither team establishing dominance.
That changed in the eleventh minute when second-year forward Daisy Duda scored to put NC State on the board first.
From that point, VCU struggled to find their rhythm offensively, forced on the back foot by an aggressive NC State offense.
The Wolfpack scored again in the 34th minute to extend their lead to 2-0.
The Rams fought back, seeming to gain momentum with second-year midfielder/forward Jess Gotshall narrowly missing a shot on goal to end the half.
Despite the deficit, VCU fought hard at the beginning of the second half but eventually gave up a third goal at 61:02.
“Obviously these weren’t the results we wanted, but we did take a step forward as a team,” said VCU fourth-year defender Ishpreen Marwah. “We’re working on high pressing as a unit, we had opportunities to break NC State down and go on the counter. We definitely created attacking opportunities, so I’m super proud of that.”
NC State would pile on one more goal in the 71st minute, winning the game 4-0.
“We have to focus on the positive things,” Hutchinson said. “Yeah, it’s not the result [that we wanted], but the result is making a push to do really well in the conference tournament. I’m still proud of them. Obviously we still have a lot of work to do.”
The Rams are off to a rough start this season, losing their first two games by a combined score of 8-1, but, this could be an opportunity to prove what they’re made of.
“Having to overcome adversity is a big thing and I think soccer teaches you how to do that as a team,” Marwah said. “We already know things won’t be as perfect as we want. The biggest thing for us is focusing on our mentality. If our mind is focused, then the way we play will be great as well.”
VCU women’s soccer will try and earn their first win of the season on Aug. 20 at 12 p.m. when they take on the University of Delaware at Stuart and Suzanne Grant Stadium.