Despite a furious final 20 minutes of action that saw the Shawnee State women's soccer program come up with not just one but two equalizing goals, the Bears weren't able to obtain victory Monday evening in a Mid-South Conference Opening Round affair as No. 7-seeded SSU fell to No. 10-seeded Life, 3-2, to see its season come to a close.
Even in the setback, Shawnee State outshot Life by a 15-11 tally and posted a 7-6 advantage in shots on goal. The Bears also held the edge, 4-0, on corner kicks in the affair.
van Wees gets Bears on board, Alford comes huge two times
Down 1-0 following a 53rd minute goal by Alex Collighan and with time winding down, the duo of Nikki van Wees and Paige Alford were able to execute a run perfectly.
Speeding down the near side of the field, Alford punched a ball in between three Life defenders to van Wees, who, wide open, didn't miss on her 74th minute attempt to tie the score with 16 minutes to go.
While Collighan scored again on brilliant manuvering from the middle of the field in the 78th, Alford didn't say die.
Following a foul with less than five minutes to play in regulation, Alford posted arguably Shawnee State's most impressive goal, from a distance standpoint, by scoring on a free kick from more than 35 yards away. The sophomore's blast, which also came within eight feet from the end of the Shawnee State bench, allowed the Bears to knot the score again at two as Shawnee State made one final push.
Unfortunately, SSU's scoring was stymied for good as following a foul, Mathilde Stiltner lined up a free kick just outside of the penalty box and punched it home on the left side of the net to give Life the victory with her 86th minute conversion.
For the season, Alford finished in a tie with Alba Closa Tarres as the team's leader in points (13) while leading the Bears in goals, with six. van Wees, meanwhile, scored her second goal of the season to join the duo in double-figure point territory for the year, using her pair of goals and six assists to tally up 10 points in all.
Additional
Despite the defeat, Shawnee State, who finished the season 8-7 overall, claimed its first winning campaign since the 2017 unit finished 10-6-2. It continues an upward trend of improvement for the Bears under third-year head coach Natasha Ademakinwa, who went 5-11-1 in 2018, 6-12 in 2019 and 8-7 this past year.
Alex Raudier, in her second year at SSU after transferring from Northwestern Ohio, capped off her career at Shawnee Turf with four goals and an assist -- including three blasts and a dime in the 2020 season alone. She finished with a 3.75 GPA in environmental engineering and graduated in December 2020 with a degree in the aforementioned major.
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