Western Trinity’s Alicia Tesan ruined Westmont’s women’s soccer season-opener on Thursday, tucking in a late goal in the 85th minute to break a scoreless tie, ultimately sending the visitors to a 1-0 victory at Lovik Field.
“At the end of the game you get a late goal and it’s hard to recover,” pointed out newly appointed associate head coach Kristi Kiely. “I think overall that the girls did a great job today. We’ll learn from it and we’ll grow and hopefully be better.”
The Warrior women held the Spartins to eight shots on the day, the last one being the dagger from Tesan. Roxanne Love, who had three saves in goal for Westmont, disrupted the initial attack from Tesan and Daniela Gerig but a favorable bounce left Love out of position and Tesan knocked it home.
“I think our defense played really well,” said Westmont defender Britney Scannell. “We’ve been strong on defense these last three games.”
It’s a different story on the offensive side of the ball for the Warriors, who have scored just one goal in three matches (two of which were scrimmages). Westmont is still finding out how to replace the offense provided by the departed Amy Lawson, who scored 11 goals in 2008.
“We have more of our experience in the back,” Kiely said. “I don’t forsee us getting scored on a lot but we need to figure out a way to score. I think people will step up.”
Junior Jameisha Washington could be one of those, playing up front with Shanae Coker and Aolani Rueff.
“I think today we picked it up significantly compared to UCSB,” said Washington, alluding to a 1-0 exhibition loss last week in which the Gauchos limited the Warriors to just one shot. “Today we were taking people on and that’s good.”
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Western Trinity’s head coach Graham Roxburgh agreed, saying that the Warriors were the better side on Thursday for much of the game.
“In the second half I was very pleased because I challenged the girls to not wilt and we didn’t. I felt we got stronger as the game went on,” he said.
Westmont head coach Dave Wolf was unavailable for post-game interviews, having to leave within minutes of the final whistle in order to make his men’s team’s game later that afternoon at Biola University. The men’s team won its season opener 5-1 over Westminster of Utah as part of the Azusa Pacific Cougar Classic.
Westmont opens its season with three home games, the second of the three being on Sept. 1 against Cam Camarena’s Hawaii-Hilo side. Camarena, who has been an assistant coach at Westmont, SBCC and UCSB and is also the men’s coach at Hawaii-Hilo, founded the local chapter of AYSO in Santa Barbara in the 1970’s. San Marcos grad Kelly White plays for Camarena and the Vulcans.
