By KAROLINA JURESIUTE
Northwestern Lady Rangers soccer team finished their exhibition games marathon on Saturday in Alva with a 1-1 tie with Rogers State University.
Cassidy Fitzgerald, No. 2, a sophomore biology-health science major from End, gets ready to kick the ball Saturday in an exhibition game in Alva with Rogers State University. The teams tied 1-1.
The game started off slow and neither of the teams scored in the first half of the game. Both teams had good defense and played hard. Northwestern Lady Rangers would get close to the goal but then couldn’t score.
Entering halftime, the score was 0-0.
Just after a few minutes, Rogers State scored their first goal to get in the lead 0-1. After that goal, the Lady Rangers were motivated to get back into the game. Some minutes later, #11 Victoria Ruvalcaba scored a goal to tie the game 1-1.
Neither of the teams could come up with another goal, so the result remained tied until the end of the game.
“It was a really good learning and growing experience for us,” said Alex Piekarski, the head women’s soccer coach. “Credit to Rogers State. They played some different tactics, and it took us a little while to adjust to them, but I am really proud of my team. I thought we created a good amount of chances. We could have finished a couple more of them, but I thought we created a couple really good ones, too.”
Piekarski said the team will be working on putting together the full 90-minutes and increasing the depth of the team during the team practices.
“I thought we brought out a lot of intensity and great effort; we had some tough practices and just a lot of mixing in new girls,” said Lady Ranger’s goalkeeper senior Rachel Brown, from Pomona, California, majoring in biology health science. “We have 12 freshmen and one transfer, so it has been a challenge to integrate them with all of our returners, but I think tonight probably showed how hard we have been working.”
Ruvalcaba said the first half went almost as the team had planned for, with subs coming in and making a difference.
“I definitely think that is what happened,” said Ruvalcaba, a junior from Houston, Texas, who majors in biology. “We all worked together as the team, not getting the result that we wanted but definitely had some progress, and it is a good starting point for the season.”
Both of the players said the team’s goal for this season is to get a lot of goals, work hard, have fun and make it to the GAC playoffs.
Piekarski said the team is really excited because they have a good balance of incoming players and veterans. The team has a really good senior leadership.
Piekarski agreed with his players that the main goal of the season is to make the GAC playoffs.
“To get back to the conference tournament,” Piekarski said. “We made it in 2021,2022 and we missed it last year, and we are really hungry to get back this year.”
Lady Rangers travel to Nebraska on Thursday to play Wayne State College and will come back to play their first official home game against Pittsburg State University on Sunday at noon.
Find stats at riderangersride.com.