Queen’s kept pace with their biggest challenger in the OUA last weekend.
On Saturday, the Gaels drew 0-0 against the Ottawa Gee-Gees (3-0-1), who outlasted them for the OUA East regular season title in 2012. Goalkeeper Madison Tyrell made ten saves against the Gee-Gees, with Gaels offense led by strikers Jennifer Siu and Brittany Almeida.
On Sunday, with just 17 hours’ recovery time, Queen’s (3-0-1) defeated the Trent Excalibur 3-1 in Peterborough. The win resulted in a tie with Ottawa for first place in the OUA East Division.
For Queen’s head coach Dave McDowell, the weekend’s games suggest the Gaels are getting better as a team.
“The group has realized that to do what we need to do to be successful, they need to be much better as a whole,” he said, adding that the season is a series of getting better a little more each game.
“It’s always a case of getting to the end of our season playing as well as we can and as healthy as we can, and hope we get some good bounces going forward.”
Midfielder Savannah Meyer-Clement netted the first Gaels goal against Trent in the 22nd minute, with striker Breanna Burton scoring two goals in the second half.
Kelsey White scored Trent’s single goal in the 68th minute, cutting the margin to two.
The win Sunday featured an almost completely different Queen’s lineup on Saturday against Ottawa, resulting in a relatively successful first week for the Gaels.
McDowell cited the scoreless draw with Ottawa as a result of “two good teams that were difficult to break down playing each other” on a fast surface and smaller pitch.
He thought the Gaels were strong in the first half, noting that the game was not quite as helter-skelter as it is when two teams play at a high speed.
“Both teams were able to push the ball around a little bit,” he said.
With this set of away games, the Gaels are getting rid of most of their travelling in the first two weeks of the season.
Next up for the Gaels (3-0-1) is another pair of away games, at Laurentian (2-0-2) on Sept. 14 and Nipissing (1-2-1) on Sept. 15. Both games start at 12 p.m.
Tags
Gaels, McDowell, Ottawa, Trent, Women's soccer
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