Women's Soccer

Schedule/Results | Roster | News | Archives

Saturday, August 25 at Binghamton (Exhibition)

Last Saturday was the first game of the season for the soccer team. We played an exhibition game against Binghamton University. All week I had been looking forward to it. The game marked the end of preseason, which was amazing in itself, but more importantly, it was my first college soccer game (and for the other seven freshman). I woke up at 8 a.m. to get breakfast before we left at 10:30 a.m. I wasn't nervous, but I found myself wondering how good Binghamton really was. Sarah Clark and I looked online and saw that Binghamton's freshman recruiting class was ranked higher than ours (Binghamton #12, St. Bonaventure #14 in the Soccer Buzz Northeast Recruiting Class Poll), which made us a little bitter.

At 10:30 a.m., we piled into two vans and made our way to Binghamton. The van ride was lively. No one seemed worried about the game. We stopped for lunch at Tony's in Binghamton. Mr. and Mrs. Sotak had set up a great pre-game meal for us. I ended up eating way too much of the spaghetti, but it was ok because we had time before the game. We killed the time at the Binghamton mall and had a great time shopping and goofing around (Assistant Coach Jaime gave some of us a Scavenger Hunt List - which was funny!). An hour later, we jumped into the vans and headed for the game.

Finally, we arrived at the field and started warming up. I was really surprised that I wasn't nervous. Usually before a big game, my stomach starts to kill me. Instead, I felt really confident that the team would be great. We had trained hard for two weeks and I knew that we were ready to compete.

The game was so much fun to play. I was excited to see that I could play against college players and still hold my own. Our defense was really solid, allowing the offense to take risks and take more shots. Two goals were scored in the first half by Anna Cunningham, off a break away, and Marilyn Wargo, off a penalty kick. A two goal lead in soccer is the most dangerous lead to have so we knew that we would have to step up the pressure in the second half and put the game away. I scored the third goal of the game off a break away. Then Binghamton got off a great shot that scored their only goal. Finally, Katie Shelofsky put the game totally out of reach by pounding home a rebound from a shot by Sarah Clark.

After the final whistle, we shook hands with Binghamton and had a meeting with Coach Khettry. He told us that we played great and had competed the entire game. The ride home was fun, even though all of us were extremely tired. And we realized after we got home that pre-season was officially over! I survived my first pre-season and the game Saturday made me really excited for the rest of the season, playing games and hanging out with the whole team.

- Courtney Bosse #3