Women’s Soccer Recap: Flyers Endure Tough Loss Against VCU

Brendan Zdunek
Contributing Writer

It was unusually chilly night on September 27th in Dayton, Ohio. Despite the poor weather, the Dayton’s women soccer team toughed it out to play an inter-conference game against the VCU Rams and the Hazing Prevention Committee showed up to prepare a hot barbecue.

However, in the end the Flyers took a beating at the hands of the Rams, losing 4-0.

“Today, they were efficient in finishing their opportunities and credit to them. They were dangerous in their opportunities,” said Head Coach Eric Golz.

The first half began not quite the way the Flyers wanted. In the 13th minute, VCU got the first goal of the game on their very first shot. In spite of this, Dayton regrouped defensively and were able to limit VCU’s shots to a minimum.

However, offensively the Flyers had a tough time as they had five shots and could not get the ball in the net. Eventually, the first portion of the game ended with score being at 1-0.

In the second half, the Rams started to put the game to bed. Near the beginning of the half, VCU scored two goals within four minutes of each other. The Flyers kept trying their best to break the ice on their part, but despite getting three more shots in the half, the defense and the goaltending of the Rams seemed to be just too much. Anytime the Flyers were in the area of the opposing team’s goal, VCU’s defense just blocked every chance Dayton got.

To cap off the rout, the Rams got one last goal with less than eight minutes left in the game.

In conclusion, it was not the best night for Dayton women’s soccer. The players did not look happy after the game and Coach Golz was a little critical of the way they played.

“Shame on us for falling asleep defensively and not being mentally plugged in to do the simple things consistently well,” said Golz.

The next upcoming game for the Dayton women’s soccer team is another home game against St. Joseph’s. It seems to be another tough matchup for the Flyers as St. Joe’s has an overall record of 7-3-2 and is 2-1 in conference play so far. Being another tough conference matchup, Coach Golz thinks that mistakes made in the game on Thursday need to be corrected as soon as possible.

“They’re another team that, if you’re sloppy and not plugged in mentally, they will punish you. So we need to quickly apply some difficult lessons that we have learned here this evening.”

That game will be at 1:00 P.M. on Sunday at Baujan Field and can actually be viewed on ESPN+.

Photos taken by Christian Cubacub.