The College of DuPage women’s soccer team played against #11 Rock Valley on Oct. 15. DuPage was entering this game with a 8-2-1 record so far in the season, while Rock Valley entered with a 14-1 record.
In the first half both teams had decent chances to score, with Rock Valley having a few more. Nonetheless, both teams’ defenses manage to keep the score tied with some incredible saves from DuPage’s goalie, number 99 Elizabeth Fried.
In the second half, Rock Valley came to life. They kept attacking and had many chances at goal, especially in the last twenty minutes. Chaos ensued with four yellow cards being shown as the game became more physical with DuPage making sure Rock Valley didn’t score.
The game ended in a 0-0 tie.After the game, head coach Matt Hanna said the key to keeping the tie with the tough and physical team was keeping teamwork tight.
“It’s just about staying compact and working together and believing in ourselves. They did a really good job of that today, and [I] really proud of them,” Hanna said.
Hanna said one of the main reasons the Chaps pulled off the tie was their strong defense, a trend he was seeing throughout the season.
“They’ve got a lot of resilience, they work for each other,” he said. “So the [other] team have got to come here and they’ve got to try and break us down and we’ve got to find ways to get further forward to get that goal. But defensively we can win games on the back up. So I’m really happy with that.”
When asked about how high emotions tension got, he stated: “That’s really, really tough to keep the emotions. You see the emotions were flying high a bit there. We knew that we were the underdogs going into the game, so we were letting them get frustrated and just trying to keep our cool and just stick with our game plan.”
DuPage’s next game is against Triton College (4-10-1) for Sophomore Day on Oct. 22 at 6:30 P.M.
