The women’s soccer team remains undefeated in the Atlantic Sun Conference, scoring 1-0 against Eastern Kentucky University on Oct. 3.
The Bears were able to score their single point during the home game due to a penalty kick by senior midfielder Kelly Van Gundy after senior forward Anna Kerr suffered an injury in the 64th minute of the game.
Coach Jeremy Bishop said, “Their defense was getting ready to shoot, and they fouled her [Kerr]. That’s why there was a penalty kick, unfortunately, she hurt herself on the play. We’ll find out what that means later when she gets to see the doctor.
“It was a last player kind of situation, and they got desperate to try to get the ball, and fouled Anna [Kerr] instead of getting the ball. So that gave us the penalty kick and Kelly [Van Gundy] stepped up and put it in,” he said.
At the time of the game the Bears (6-5-1, ASUN 5-0-1) were first in the ASUN Conference, and the Colonels (6-6-1, ASUN 3-2) followed closely behind at second in the conference.
“I thought we had to hang on a little bit at the end and make it pretty for the last 10 or 15 minutes, but they were really throwing some numbers forward at us, so we had to put some numbers back,” Bishop said. “We couldn’t get out of our half, but that’s what you got to do in those situations, and they’re a good team, and so we knew he had to have numbers back and fight them off.”
The Colonels took 14 shots with 5 of those being on goal. The Bears had 6 shots on goal and 12 shots total.
Senior goalkeeper Kajsa Pruner had five saves, preventing the Colonels from scoring.
“For me personally, I just need to stay calm because I know my capabilities,” Pruner said. “I know what I can do, and I have no reason to stress. I know that I can save all their shots. I know that I can help my team to win. So I just need to calm myself down since I’m the last player on the field before the goal. I just need to contribute that calm energy to everyone else so that everyone else can play calmly and know their own capabilities.”
After no goals in the first half, Bishop said the team regrouped during halftime.
“We talked a lot about how we could create more opportunities. They were sitting in and not giving us a lot of opportunity to beat them and make passes,” he said. “They were just keeping everything in front. So we were just talking about different ways that we could try to break them down and then still try to stretch the game, because I thought we could get behind their back line. We did it early a couple times in the game, but didn’t get any goals out of it, but I thought we could do that. We just talked a lot about how our midfielders and our forwards could make different movements to get behind them, or if they did start to back off with their back line, then we can start to possess it.”
Pruner said everyone on the team put in a lot of effort.
“We could have not won if not everyone contributed the way they did. Since they were number two in the conference and we were number one, it was a really important one for us to get some space between us and them point wise,” she said. “It felt really good. We were playing really good in the first half, but we needed that extra detail, so I feel like we got that together in the second half, and really were able to connect.”
The Bears played another home game Oct. 6 against Bellarmine (3-8-2, 2-3-1), winning 4-2 after sophomore forward Caroline Billings performed the team’s first hat trick since 2021.
The Bears will continue to kick it at home, going against the North Florida Ospreys at 7 p.m. Oct. 10.