In a weekend filled with rivalry, the Buffalo women's soccer team managed to bounce back from a season opening road loss to the Niagara Purple Eagles, coming up with a shutout on Sunday over southern rival St. Bonaventure.
In Friday night's match-up against the Purple Eagles the Bulls fell 3-1 to the northern opponent despite a 1-1 halftime gridlock. Buffalo sophomore Andrea Vescio scored the Bulls lone goal on a thirty-yard blast that eluded Purple Eagles goalkeeper Sarah Stevens. Bulls junior Kara Winch was credited with the assist on the goal.
In its second game of the season the Bulls were able to notch an early goal and not look back, as they defeated the St. Bonaventure Bonnies by a score of 2-0. The win evened Buffalo's record at 1-1 overall.
Buffalo head coach Jean-A Tassy seemed pleased with the team's improvement from Friday to Sunday.
"I think the biggest improvement is just the fact that we trusted in our attack which really gave us some quality opportunities against Bonaventure," Tassy said. "We had some of the same quality opportunities against Niagara, but we didn't finish, against Bonaventure we finished."
In the season's opener at Niagara, Buffalo fell victim to two second-half goals by Niagara's Brittany Bisnott. The Purple Eagle attack proved to be too much, and despite several Buffalo opportunities, they could not manage another goal.
"It was 1-1 at the half, and we seemed to struggle slightly coming into the second half, I think we lost a little bit of our focus." Tassy said. "Friday was a difficult game, due to the fact that it's a local rivalry. I think the girls knew that, and they knew they had some speed on top. I think we did some stuff for the first half that gave us the equalizer. We had about three or four opportunities to put the game away, and that didn't happen. We had two headers that the defense had to clear, and we had a breakaway the first couple minutes in the second half. If we finish that, it's a 2-1 game, that's a whole different ballgame."
It was a different story when the Bulls hosted the Bonnies at Buffalo's UB Stadium, as they managed two goals with nine shots on net. Junior Heidi Griffiths notched both first half Buffalo goals, while freshman goalie Amy Coron and the Bulls defense held strong recording their first shutout of the year. Coron's two saves were enough to get her first career shutout.
"Goalkeeper Amy Coron did a tremendous job for us this weekend, and Heidi and Andrea did a super job as frontrunners." Tassy said. "Jenessa Banwell had an outstanding game for us at outside midfield and the girls on defense played outstanding on Sunday."
Griffiths' first goal came just under three minutes into the game on a throw in from the hands of Courtney MacVie. Her second tally came from the feet of freshman Caitlin Higgins who's long ball set Griffiths free on a breakaway.
St. Bonaventure keeper Lisa Eberhart made seven saves in net for the Bonnies, but didn't get much help from her attackers, as they only managed two shots on goal, and four shots overall.
Sunday's game was a success for the Bulls, and Coach Tassy has already seen improvement from the first game, attributed to learning from the loss to Niagara.
"What we learned from that game which I felt was a key point is that as we create our own opportunities we need to finish," Tassy said. "We have had some balance on the attack, it's the continuation of maintaining discipline. We dropped the first game because we failed to concentrate."
The women's soccer team will be in action again next weekend as they head to Vermont and Rhode Island to do battle on Friday against Vermont, and Sunday against Brown University. They won't return to their home field again until they host cross-town rival Canisius on Sept. 14 at 4 p.m. at UB Stadium.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
