Benet left with sour taste after tie with Glenbard West

 

By Paul La Tour
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Sometimes a tie can feel like a victory. This wasn’t one of those times for Benet.

The Redwings were unable to build on a first-half lead and gave up a penalty-kick goal midway through the second half before settling for a 1-1 tie with Glenbard West on a frigid Thursday night at Benedictine University.

“Tough loss,” Benet goalie Claire Munaretto said. “Oh, I guess it was a tie. It felt like a loss.”
Munaretto’s confusion is understandable even though the Redwings (2-0-1) only led for about 18 minutes in the match.

The lead came in the 35th minute following a mad scramble in front of the Hilltoppers (0-1-1) goal. Sophomore Meaghan O’Hara eventually booted it past Anna Soane for a 1-0 lead with 4:24 left in the half.

It stayed that way until the 53rd minute when Hilltopper sophomore Kaitlin Moore was fouled in the penalty area. Her low shot on the PK beat Munaretto inside the left post.

“We shouldn’t have allowed the PK to happen, but we’re working it out,” Munaretto said.

The Redwings had two other good scoring chances but couldn’t find the tiebreaker in the final 27 minutes. The first of those came just two minutes after the goal.

Jamei Borges found Madie Burke with a long pass up the middle. Burke caught up to it in full stride inside the penalty area, but her shot rang off the crossbar from 8 yards out.

Borges had a chance in the 62nd minute but her waist-high kick of a bounding ball near the top of the penalty area sailed just a bit high over the crossbar.

After a slow start to the game, the Redwings began taking control of territorial possession in the final 25 minutes of the first half. They put five of their six shots on goal during that time.

“We came out a little weak, but around the 20-minute mark we started to play our game and we started making our runs,” said Benet defender Maria Schwabe, one of four co-captains.

“Our team realized we were already 20 minutes in and we needed to get going.” 

During that stretch Schwabe, Amanda Kaiser, and Rachel Lovely all had decent scoring attempts but couldn’t put one past Soane, who finished with five saves.

“We’ve got to generate more offense,” Benet coach Henry Wind said. “Somehow we’ve got to get some of these kids to take it. I know that’s the toughest thing to do in the last third of the offense, to get that going. But we’ve got to get someone to take charge in there.”

Defensively, the Redwings kept the Hilltoppers at bay for the majority of the game. But the Hilltoppers weren’t without good scoring chances against Munaretto.

Munaretto needed to make her first save in the 17th minute on a point-blank shot by Katie Watt. In the second half, Munaretto stopped a header in the 51st minute, just ahead of Moore’s PK goal. 

She stopped Watt again in the 58th minute and made another save on a shot from Molly Abromitits. Within moments of that, Munaretto had to clear the ball from the top of the box with two Hilltoppers players bearing down.

Munaretto finished with five saves, including four in the second half.

“It’s tough getting a tie,” Schwabe said. “But we’ll learn from it and keep going hard.”