WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – The Milwaukee women's soccer team opened the 2022 campaign Thursday night at Spry Stadium, falling by a final score of 2-0 to a Wake Forest team coming off a strong season last fall and just missing a spot in the preseason Top 25 national poll.
"We definitely jumped into it with both feet," head coach
Kevin Boyd said. "A tough opponent, and a tough place to go play. So playing a Top-50 team in the season opener with our extremely young squad was a bit of a challenge. It was good in terms of getting to face a top side and see where we are."
Things nearly started perfectly for the Panthers (0-1), with
Natalie Auble getting an opportunity to find the scoring column just 76 seconds into the match. The Demon Deacons (1-0) made the important stop and then scored their own goal in the fifth minute, helping them on their way to an 11
th victory in their last 13 games at home.
"As a whole, what a great first game of the year to really set the tone of who we are trying to become and where we are going and to get challenged by one of the top teams in the country right now," Boyd said. "Very good game for us moving forward, now our job is to take some lessons from it, improve upon it, and get better for the next game."
After a couple more early shot attempts from the MKE side to try and equalize,
Parker Donahugh came up big in the 30
th minute to keep it 1-0 at the break, making an impressive punch on a shot from distance to send the attempt high.
"It was good at halftime, we got the chance to get together and discuss things we needed to do better and we stepped up in the second half and were quite a bit better in those areas," Boyd said. "I don't think the stats really reflect how much better the second half was for us. The first half I wasn't too pleased, but the second half I was quite happy with a lot of parts of our game. Some of the defending we were doing, how we were trying to play, we created some decent chances – we just weren't very good at trying to finish those chances."
The MKE offense got an early second-half shot from
Kayla Rollins and another from
Jenni Andjelic in the 57
th minute but found themselves down 2-0 after an insurance goal by the Deacs at the 53:05 mark.
For the game, Wake Forest finished with an advantage of 21-to-8 in shots, with both sides earning four corner kicks. Donahugh finished with seven saves, while
Breanna Culver led the way with a pair of shots.
A pair of contest are on the schedule next week, heading across town to battle Marquette Thursday before hosting Lindenwood for the home opener Sunday.
