By Hayden Choate
@choatehayden
With just 1:50 in the first overtime period, Jamie Joseph scored a header off a corner kick to lead Clark University to a 3-2 road victory over Springfield College Wednesday night.
The goal was Joseph’s second of the game after she tied the score at two with just over twenty minutes left in the second half. All three of Clark’s goals came off of corner kicks.
“We made adjustments for them and they made adjustments because of the way we played. When we led 2-1 we were the better team making chances playing well,” Springfield College women’s soccer coach John Gibson said. “Defending corners for us is difficult, number 24 is a great athlete and they put quality balls in and she goes and attacks them, so it’s very frustrating to have all the hard work undone with three-set plays, three goals from corners in one game.”
Clark struck first with a goal by Cassandra Trevino off a corner kick. The Pride answered just under two minutes later with a strike from Kellie Smith to tie the game.
56 seconds later, using the momentum from her first goal Smith scored again from the right side giving Springfield a 2-1 lead.
“Two fabulous goals, it was great,” Gibson said. We’ve had a bit of trouble lately scoring goals so two cracking goals like that.”
Clark had eight corner kicks in the game. Scoring off one in each period of the game to take the conference win 3-2.
“I was proud of the way we played thought we did what we were asked to do,” Gibson said. “We matched their formation and they switched back into what we normally play, we had chances, they probably had more of the possession they’re a very good team and it is frustrating, it’s a different type of frustration to being blown out by WPI which was just I don’t know, I didn’t know what to make of that whereas this is more painful because we did what we were asked but got caught three times but it was a good game.”
With the loss, Springfield is now 4-3-2 in NEWMAC conference play after starting out 4-1-1. The Pride play host to Emerson on Saturday in their final regular-season game.
“Well split the squad because a lot of people did a lot of work today and a lot of people didn’t play so we’ll have them on different regimens tomorrow,” Gibson said. “Emersons a very different team. They like to keep the ball and pass it around whereas Clark is more direct and likes to get the ball rather quickly. They don’t play out of the back. Emerson loves to play out of the back so it’ll be a different challenge.”
This was the fourth game of the season that has gone past regulation time for Springfield. The last time they lost in overtime was on Nov. 6th, 2018 against MIT in the NEWMAC championship.
Despite the extra time loss, Gibson is happy with the way his players played Wednesday night.
“Proud of the players they played well, they did what was asked of them and they came up short,” Gibson said. I said to them “when you commit to something and it doesn’t come up it really hurts and they committed, they were fearless and they committed we didn’t get what we wanted.”
Photo: Gillian Dube/The Student