PLYMOUTH, Wis. – Dominican University erupted for five first half goals and the Lakeland University women's soccer team fell by a 6-0 count Wednesday night at Taylor Field.
The Muskies continued to struggle against tough competition in the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference, dropping to 0-5 in league games (4-7 overall). Defending NACC regular season champion Dominican improved to 4-3-4 overall and 3-0-2 in conference.
The Stars put Lakeland in a hole just over three minutes in, and then blew the match open with four goals in a span of less than nine minutes late in the half.
Dominican applied pressure almost from the start, and its first score came 3 minutes, 22 seconds into the match. Natalia Lopez beat a Muskies defender and goalkeeper
Faith Turley (
Sr.-Lincoln, Ill.) to a ball just left of the penalty area, and then passed back to Grace Larson, who took advantage of the open net to score from 20 yards out.
Lakeland stabilized and had mounted a few pushes into the Stars end just before the second goal of the match in the 28th minute. Larson passed to Sophia Bartridge coming on, and her shot from 23 yards out tucked in under the crossbar and just out of the reach of Turley for a 2-0 lead.
Dominican scored again just 102 seconds later, with Lopez tapping in a centering pass from Sofia Bosnos for a 3-0 lead. The Stars would then add two more goals just 1:46 apart starting at the 35:02 mark when defender Alexandria Canarelli chipped a ball from 25 yards out that found the upper right corner of the net. Lopez then was the beneficiary of a run by a teammate again soon after, with Mia Tauilahu charging the right side of the keeper's area before crossing to Lopez, who again deflected the ball in through traffic for a 5-0 lead.
Lopez added one more goal in the 57th minute for the hat trick. The Muskies played better in the second half, including Turley stopping a penalty kick by Lopez in the 50th minute. Freshman forward
Gwynn Apostolik (
New Castle, Colo.) made several runs including a shot on goal in the 62nd minute, and
Jenna Caterino (
Jr.-Stanton, Mich.) had perhaps the team's best chance of the night with a shot in the 77th minute ticketed for the top right corner that Dominican goalkeeper Gabby Thawley had to save.
The Stars finished with a 29-6 advantage in shots, including 21-4 in the first half. Turley made eight saves in goal for Lakeland, while Thawley stopped four shots for the shutout for Dominican.
The Muskies are on the road in conference play again Saturday, traveling to face Aurora University at 4 p.m.
