Soccer looks to continue strong play
The University of South Dakota women’s soccer team is looking to add to their win total against the Creighton University Sept. 13 at Morrison Stadium in Omaha, Neb.
The Coyotes are coming off a strong outing this past weekend at the South Dakota State Jackrabbit Invitational, where they beat Northern Illinois and had a double overtime tie with Nevada.
Head coach Mandy Green said the key to both games was excellent defense, something the Coyotes have been working on this season. In the victory against Northern Illinois, USD’s offense played a big role.
“We capitalized on our opportunities to score against Northern Illinois. We tried doing that against Nevada as well,” Green said. “Nevada was really, really fast but we didn’t play into it. We just stuck to our game and I really liked that.”
Three USD players earned all-tournament honors, including sophomores Rebecca Sparkman and Kasha Meyer, and junior Mackenzie Viktor.
“I thought we improved a lot this weekend,” Sparkman said. “We had a mentality that we weren’t going to let them score on us, and we did a good job of doing that.”
Meyer attributes the Coyotes’ improvements to their defense to becoming a faster team.
“Our speed of play improved a lot this weekend. We are starting to get more comfortable as a team and I think that showed,” Meyer said.
The Coyotes will be taking on the Creighton Blue Jays Friday, a team that has scored 16 goals in the past three games. Half of those goals were scored by first-year Paige Jarsombeck, but Green said that is not what the team will be focusing on this weekend.
“They’ve scored all of those goals, good for them. We are focused on our offense and keeping the ball so they don’t have it,” Green said.
The team says that while Creighton may have a high number of goals this season, they are going to change anything during practice.
“We just try to keep the same principles every game. It doesn’t matter who the opponent is, we just want to play our game,” Meyer said.
Kickoff will be at 7 p.m.
