ConU Roundup: Lady Stingers fall to Laval in soccer, rugby

The women’s soccer team came out of the weekend with mixed results as they beat Trois Rivieres 3-2 before losing to the Laval Rouge et Or 2-0 at home on Sunday. The team will look to move up the standings by sweeping their opponents next weekend when they play the Bishop’s Lady Gaiters and the McGill Martlets.
The season opener at Trois Rivieres was an exhibition of offence for the Stingers with quick successive strikes by midfield Jessica Shroeder and forward Karen Stewart finding the back of the net in the 18th and 20th minutes of the opening half. The Patriotes would notch in a goal before Megan Walsh of Vancouver, BC scored the game winner in the 55th.
The team returned home to face the Laval Rouge et Or at Loyola field Sunday afternoon. Laval opened up the game by attacking along the ConU flanks, forcing Stingers goalkeeper Fanny Berthiaume to come out and play the ball outside the box. Despite crisp passing and a total dominance by Laval in time of possession, Concordia did not relinquish a goal until late in the first half when Davis made an error by sending a clearing pass right to Laval striker Virginie Jacques who promptly sent it sailing past Berthiaume to the left corner of ConU’s net with three minutes left before halftime. Laval would seal the victory early in the second with a volley into the Concordia goal.
“We need to work on consistency. We came out playing well in the first half but it was like we gave up in the second,” said ConU defender Jennifer Ethier-Gamache. “We needed to play quicker for 90 minutes and manage our stress because we are nervous playing against these better teams. Our biggest problem though is that we need to play intense for the whole game.”
Laval is considered a top tier squad with close to 80 per cent of its players having participated in national competition either in the university or club level. While the Rouge et Or were the ones able to finish on their scoring opportunities, Sanchez feels his team played better in this game than in their win against Trois Rivieres.
“We’re making great progress, we came out with the win on Friday in our opening match though it wasn’t as tidy a game as it should have been,” said Sanchez. “The effort today was outstanding so I leave the weekend feeling content because we accomplished the goals we set for ourselves.”
Following the weekend action the Lady Stingers now sit in fourth place overall, trailing the Universite de Montreal, Laval, and Sherbrooke. Traditional women’s soccer powerhouse the McGill Martlets, who had a 56 game winning streak snapped by Laval last year, have gone winless in the first three games. Concordia will travel to Bishop’s for a match on Friday before they host the Martlets in the Erica Cadieux memorial game this Sunday at 2 p.m.

Women’s Soccer

Fresh off a dominating opening season victory over Sherbrooke, the Lady Stingers were brought back to earth by Laval as the Rouge et Or won a physical battle at Loyola Field 22-19.
Opening the match with an attack that forced Laval to play on their heels, Concordia opened the scoring with two converted tries from the back row courtesy of Reno, Nevada native Larissa Andrusyshyn. However, Concordia was not able to keep the defending Quebec conference champions away from the goal, allowing Laval to build up a 17-14 lead going into the second half.
“Our plan of attack was to come up with the forwards, and we didn’t do that,” said Concordia head coach Graeme McGravie. “We had some initial success but we weren’t able to keep it up all game.”
The second half began with Laval retaining the ball inside Stingers territory for the first fifteen minutes. The Rouge et Or took frequent advantage of openings along the flanks as Concordia routinely coughed up the ball to them at key moments. However they weren’t able to score and were made to pay for it when Stingers fly half Sydney Theriault picked up an errant Laval pass and set off running towards the Concordia goal. Theriault took the ball fifty yards to the ten yard line of the goal before she was tackled. Fortunately Theriault was able to pass the ball off to a streacking Jennifer Rosenbaum for the score and a 19-17 ConU lead in the 20th minute. Laval would respond four minutes later when winger Catherine Carrier marched the ball ten yards through the Stingers defence to put her team back on top for good.
While Laval was able to retain a majority of the possession through sound tackling and a strong physical edge, McGravie believes Concordia did have chances to put the pressure on the opposition.
“The biggest difference we saw in the second half was that we did not attack them and let them attack us,” he said. “We were content to defend instead of attacking like in the first half, when we did attack them we had them going backwards which was what we needed to do, and then we just kind of got happy with that and stopped doing it, which was frustrating
While his team did cough up possession more than once, McGravie is encouraged by what he has seen from the team do far. While he admits the team still must work on certain fundamentals such as ball retention and fitness, he does have reason to feel encouraged. Compared to a team like Laval, which plays all summer long as a club team, the Lady Stingers have been playing together for only two weeks and have managed put together a 1-1 record on the season. They are now placed third overall in the Quebec league and will look to improve their record when they host Bishop’s University on Friday.

Stingers’s Men’s Rugby team drops season opener 35-0.

The Concordia Stingers men’s rugby team fell to the McGill Redmen 35-0 Wednesday night at Molson Stadium. The team will head on the road to play Bishop’s on Friday before coming back to play host to the Sherbrooke Vert et Or on Sunday at noon.

Men’s Soccer

Concordia’s Men’s soccer team is winless this season after dropping decisions to the Universite du Quebec at Trois Rivieres and The Universite de Laval. The team will look to get in the win column when they host the McGill Redmen this Sunday at 4pm.

Running

Concordia’s cross country team finished sixth overall at the McGill Open, a 6 km race held last Saturday at Mont Royal Park. Simon Malik Girous led the Concordia team, finishing 23rd overall with a time of 21:03.

On the Diamond

The Stingers baseball club sits at 3-5 following a set of 10-4 and 9-5 victories over McGill during a doubleheader played between the two rivals last Sunday.

Erica Cadieux Memorial game

The women’s soccer team will play the McGill Martlets in the Erica Cadieux memorial game. The game will be played to honor the memory of Cadieux, who was killed in a car accident in Jan. 2006. Cadieux played midfielder/defender for the Stingers women’s soccer team from 1992-94.

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