The 10th-ranked Slippery Rock University women’s soccer team demonstrated their strength as they powered past Mercyhurst University in a 5-0 shutout victory on Wednesday night.
The Rock turned it on in the second half, scoring four goals following a slow start to the game to advance to 2-0-0 in the season and 1-0-0 in Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference play.
The first goal came in the 34th minute off a long shot from junior defender Izabel Scott.
Freshmen Caitlin Binder stepped up big for the Rock with three assists in the game.
Junior Stephanie Buckenheimer tallied two goals and had one assist in a great performance before suffering from an injury later on in the game.
Freshman Caitlin Binder chipped in three assists for the Green and White.
Sophomore Lucy Hannon and junior Lauren Impey found the back of the net for one goal apiece.
Sophomore newcomer Leslie Henny rounded off the score sheet with an assist of her own in the winning effort.
Junior Dana O’Neill recorded a shutout, stopping all five of Mercyhurst’s shots to earn the win in goal for the Green and White.
Hannon thinks that Slippery Rock got off to a slow start in the first half and were not playing up to their potential at first.
“We just weren’t passing the ball like we usually do,” Hannon said. “We weren’t playing as a team and it just showed, as it took us longer than we would have hoped to get on the score sheet.”
The Rock opened up the second half strong, with some creative play, notching their second goal early and not looking back from there.
“We knew that we had two options for the second half,” Hannon said, “We could either go out play like we are capable of or keep going the way we were playing earlier in the game. We chose to give it our all during that the second half.”
The Rock made some key substitutions off the bench during the first half, which led to a purely dominant second half, head coach Noreen Herlihy said of Wednesday’s game.
“The young players made a huge impact off the bench which followed us through to the second half,” Herlihy said. “It was a purely dominant second half.”
The Rock finished the match with a 16-14 advantage in total shots, 8-5 in shots on goal, and 7-6 in corner kicks.
Slippery Rock will host the University of Charleston tomorrow at James Egli Field for a 1 p.m. non-conference game.
