Women’s Soccer Scores a Pair, Lift Nittany Lions to Another Title

Story posted October 27, 2014 in CommRadio, Sports by Mike Esse

The Penn State Nittany Lions women’s soccer team (16-2-1, 11-1-0 B1G) took on the Iowa Hawkeyes (10-4-1, 5-4-1 B1G) Sunday at Jeffrey Field.

This was a special day for the Nittany Lions as they celebrated Senior Day. They honored the achievements of their four seniors-- Emily Hurd, Kindrah Kohne, Kori Chapic and Whitney Church.

The celebrations before the match were all fun and games, but Penn State had their eyes on wrapping up another Big Ten Championship in a game that was truly a tale of two halves. 

Both teams had different strategies coming into the game.

Iowa has relied on the tag team of Cloe Lacasse and Melanie Pickert who have combined for 17 goals this season and have started all 18 matches.

Penn State, on the other hand, have five players who can score at any point and that makes them very dangerous when they get going on offense.

Iowa and Penn State both allow less than one goal per game and harass the opponent with physical defense, which causes many turnovers.

The first half was all Iowa, as their defense would not let Penn State get into any sort of offensive rhythm. Iowa also scored on a perfect corner kick in the first five minutes of the match.

The Nittany Lions could not get anything going in the first half offensively but kept their composure defensively after surrendering the early goal.

The storyline was completely different in the second half.

Penn State came out of the gates firing on all cylinders as they were making crisp passes and putting a lot of pressure on the conservative defense of Iowa. Chapic had both goals for the Nittany Lions on two exceptional shots.

Chapic was by far the player of the game for the Nittany Lions today and her pair of goals helped to lift Penn State to their 16th Big Ten Championship.

Trailing 1-0 in the second half, she ripped a shot from outside the box for the equalizer. The goal shifted the entire complexion of the game.

“I mean, to be honest, here we go,” Chapic said when asked about the team’s morale after getting that first goal. “Everybody rallied and it was nice to see everyone and bring everyone in. It was great to tie it up like that especially in our home field.”

“We have a lot of special players on this team and today (Kori) Chapic was special,” said head coach Erica Walsh.

Coach Walsh raved about the seniors of this Nittany Lions team and how much they mean to the club, after all it was senior day for the Lady Lions.

“It’s surreal, I mean this is such a young group and without these seniors we would not be here. There’s no question, I give them (the seniors) all the credit.”

With the win the team grabbed their 16th Big Ten title in program history and their third championship in the last four years. Penn State finishes the regular season on Thursday against Maryland at 7:00 p.m. After that is the Big Ten Women’s Soccer tournament, which is held in Purdue University on November 5th.

Abhar Shah is a junior majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email abharshah@icloud.com.