Hannah Bazarian, Photo Editor
The St. John Fisher College women’s soccer team was becoming restless.
On Saturday, Oct. 22, the Cardinals seemingly did everything they could to keep the powerful Yellowjackets in check. They held the visitors to one goal through the first half, maintained a fair share of the possession time and took every opportunity they had to fire on the UR net. But all of Fisher’s efforts amounted to nothing, in large part because of one talented pair of hands.
Those hands belonged to Yellowjackets junior goalkeeper Bridget Lang. Whenever the Cardinals broke through UR’s defense and stormed toward the goal, they were met there by Lang, crouched and poised to shut down the opposing offense yet again. The Yellowjackets’ perennial last line of defense and a team leader on and off the field, Lang had no intention of letting a single ball — let alone the game — slip through her fingers, shutting down the Cardinals with 11 saves through 76 minutes of action.
With Lang’s lights-out performance, UR didn’t need too much offense to overwhelm the Cardinals. Unlike Fisher, UR capitalized inside their opponents’ goalie box to give themselves a quick leg-up on the competition. Just nine minutes into the game, senior forward Danielle Crean lofted a ball in the box to charging freshman defender Katie Sappio. Sappio only needed to touch the ball once to elude Fisher goalkeeper Noel Peck and put the visiting team up, 1-0.
After a quiet remainder of the first half, UR added to its lead midway through the second, as senior forward Ellen Coleman made a through pass to senior midfielder Elizabeth Martens, who pounded it into the corner of the net, bringing the score to 2-0.
With the assist, Coleman became the school record holder in career points (an athlete receives a point every time they record a goal or an assist).
The women face Washington University in St. Louis this Friday.
Bernstein is a member of the class of 2014.
