The Stingers women’s soccer team rebounded from a tough 1-0 loss to the Montreal Carabins last weekend with a solid 4-2 win on Friday night at home against the UQAM Citadins.
Concordia got their first good chance to score in the 11th minute of the first half when forward Melissa Kedro was sent in by herself but Citadins goalie Valérie Labbé came out to stop the play before Kedro was able to get a shot away.
Concordia took a 1-0 lead in the 33rd minute of play when defender Kayla Myre’s header found the back of the net off of a Stingers’ corner kick.
The Stingers doubled their lead in the 38th minute when defender Philippa Lyttle’s pass from the side fell right to midfielder Alexandra Dragan, who made no mistake and buried it to give her team the 2-0 lead.
The home team came out strong early in the second-half, quickly making it 3-0 from an easy chip in by Kedro in the 6th minute of the second frame.
The Stingers then seemed to take a step back before scoring their fourth and final goal. In the 31st minute, a UQÀM player was sent on a breakaway, which sent Stingers goalie Saby Dagenais way out of her net. The Citadins player was able to beat Dagenais, leaving her a wide open net to score but her shot hit the post. The play led to a penalty kick, taken by Citadins forward Stéphanie Brien-Lejeune, who capitalized and made it 3-1.
Less than five minutes later, the Citadins were given a chance to reduce the Stingers’ lead to one goal when Brien-Lejeune was awarded another penalty kick. However, this time she hit the post, leaving the score at 3-1 Concordia.
The missed penalty kick seemed to revive the Stingers as they started to push for that fourth goal. Soon after the second penalty kick, a perfect pass from Dragan sent Kedro in all alone but her shot went just wide of the net.
In the 24th minute, Dragan had a chance to score into an open net after receiving a pass from Stingers forward Gabriela Padvaiskas, off a free kick, but she chose to pass in front of the net instead. Unfortunately, a UQÀM player got to the ball before her Stingers teammate was able to tap it in.
With three minutes left in the game, Padvaiskas was left all alone in front of Labbé but her shot went just over the crossbar. Seconds later, Padvaiskas redeemed herself when she sneaked one below the Citadins goalie and made it 4-1 Stingers.
The Citadins managed one last goal in extra time, which ended the game with a 4-2 score.
“We had a great week of practice, we knew what we did well in games last week and we knew what we had to do better today,” said head coach Jorge Sanchez. “A lot of the stuff we did in training this week came out in the game. To score four goals is great. I’m a little disappointed about the two goals [against].”
“I think we possessed the ball better and we played intelligent,” said Dagenais. “We practised a lot of our offense because we were struggling to put the ball in the net, so we worked a lot on that and it paid off with four goals.”
The team will play host to Université de Laval on Friday, Sept. 20 at 8:30 p.m.
