BLUEFIELD, Va. – Women's soccer snapped its three-game losing skid with a 2-2 draw at Bluefield on Saturday afternoon. The Bears held a 2-0 with under seven minutes to play in regulation but the Rams stormed back to tie the game with a pair of goals in a stretch of 2:42 to send the game into overtime. After 110 minutes of soccer, the game was officially ended in a draw.
Saturday truly was a game in which both sides could argue that they should have come away with a victory. Shawnee State will look back at the fact that it had a 2-0 lead before Bluefield scored with 6:43 and 4:01 left in the game and argue that you have to be able to hold late leads. The Rams will point out that they had the better of the overtime play and SSU needed a defensive save in the first overtime to just to escape with a draw. The Bears also had a defensive save in the final five minutes of the second half before Bluefield later scored during that same time frame.
Shawnee State struck early in the contest as the Bears scored off of their first corner try of the game. Just over 11 minutes into the contest, SSU earned the corner attempt and Bethany Ward put the ball in for play and found Allison Nagle on the other end to put the Bears up 1-0.
That score would hold all the way until the 62nd minute of play when Elizabeth Abbott brought the ball down the left side of the field. She would play her pass into the box and found Schuyler Jones for the header finish to put her team up 2-0. That goal came just over five minutes after Jessica Fair took a shot that struck the post to deny her scoring chance.
Trailing 2-0 with time running down, Bluefield rattled the crossbar with just 7:26 showing on the clock but just under a minute later it would get within one as Pip Patterson finished a Whitney Browning pass at the top of the box to make it 2-1 with 6:43 to play.
The game-tying goal from the Rams came with 4:01 showing on the clock. Just moments earlier, the Bears defense made a defensive save but could not get the ball totally cleared. This time Patterson and Browning switched roles as Browing, who assisted on the first goal, netted her team's second goal of the game off a field for Patterson to make it 2-2.
Shawnee State's Jones would have a shot to win the game with time running down that was saved while Ward also sent a shot wide before regulation ran out.
In the first overtime session, Emily Kuehn came up with three saves while SSU also recorded a defensive save and watched another BC shot sail wide of target. For the Bears, they earned a corner with just over a minute left in the first 10-minute overtime session. Hannah Figlestahler would take the only shot of the opening overtime for the Bears but that lone attempt in the session was stopped.
The second overtime was not nearly as adventurous Bluefield earned a corner kick in which they generated no offense from and sent a shot wide with 6:57 to play. That would be the final recorded shot of the game as the clock struck zeroes with the teams forced into a 2-2 draw.
Bluefield held a 24-18 advantage in shots for the game and had a 14-9 advantage in shots on goal. Kuehn finished with 12 saves in goal and also got help from the two SSU defensive saves while her counterpart, Kayla Richardson, stopped seven of her nine shots faced. For the SSU offense, Fair finished with a team-high four shots while Jones and Nagle each took three with each adding a goal in the contest.
Women's soccer will be back in action this coming Monday as it travels to Brescia for a non-conference matchup at 4 p.m. The next MSC contest for the Bears will be next Saturday, October 12 when they travel to rival Rio Grande.
