Women's College Soccer
Canisius College 4, Rider University 1
LAWRENCEVILLE?The Broncs lost a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference game to Canisius Friday afternoon. “I thought we gave it a good effort,” said Rider head coach Drayson Hounsome. “If we remove the mistakes I think we could have won this game.”
Rider (2-11-3, 1-4-1 MAAC) tied the score at 1-1 with 8:33 left in the first half on a header by freshman Jordan Bunch (Jackson, N.J./Jackson Memorial) off a crossing pass from senior Erin Mahar (Barnegat, N.J./Colonia). “Erin had a tremendous game,” Hounsome said. “Their coach gave her a nice compliment after the game how she was all over and dominated the field. She put a tremendous ball to Jordan who had a wonderful header, coming up from her fullback position.”
“I saw Erin had the ball out wide and nobody was in the middle, so I ran to the middle and Erin hit a perfect ball to me and I headed it in,” said Bunch, after scoring her third goal of the season, tied for team high.
Bunch began the season as a forward but has seen the majority of her playing time on defense. “She's better with space to run into rather than playing with her back to the goal,” Hounsome said. “That's what we want from her, joining the attack from that position.”
“I like playing up top because it is exciting, but I also like defense,” Bunch said. “I like preventing goals, being the last defender. That is exciting too.”
Although a freshman, Bunch is a veteran of 16 games now. “College soccer is a lot faster than high school, the speed of play is much quicker, and everything happens so fast, but that's how the game is supposed to be played,” Bunch said. “I like it better this way.”
“The first half looked good,” Hounsome said. “We responded from a mistake, giving up a goal in the corner, and came back with a great goal to tie it up. We looked dangerous attacking.”
Canisius (10-3-3, 5-2 MAAC) took a 1-0 lead in the 29th minute of play, and took a 2-1 lead 13 minutes into the second half. “A couple of individual mistakes and they scored from them,” Hounsome said. “That puts us in a tough situation because now we have to chase the game and we can't play the style we want to play.”
Freshman Kelly Reinwald scored the last two Golden Griffin goals in the final 27 minutes of the game. Reinwald leads Canisius with 10 goals.
Canisius out-shot Rider 16-11.
Rider sophomore goalkeeper Alex Post (Chalfont, Pa./Central Bucks West) made eight saves. Post entered the game ranked eighth in the nation in saves per game at 7.64.
Daniella Pettinari made five saves for Canisius
Rider lost 2-0 at Canisius last season. Rider defeated Canisius in Lawrenceville 2-1 in 2006.
Rider and Canisius have now met 12 times with Rider holding a 6-5-1 advantage in the series that began in 1997.
Rider returns home for the final time this season to host Niagara Sunday at 12 noon. Five graduating seniors will be honored before the game. “Mathematically, we still have a chance to get in (to the MAAC playoffs),” Hounsome said. “We're focused on that.”
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