On Saturday afternoon the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse soccer team began their 2015 Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) season with a rousing 2-1 victory over UW-River Falls at the Veterans Memorial Field Sports Complex. After this match, the Eagles have now improved to a 7-3 overall record while starting 1-0 in the WIAC. The Falcons now drop to 3-5-1 overall and 0-2 within the conference.

For the first time since 2008, UW-L has earned a win in its WIAC opener, going 0-2-4 in their previous six seasons. On another note, the Eagles’ seventh overall win this year has brought them close to their overall highest mark which occurred in 2011 when they had 10 wins.

UW-L began the game with a 1-0 lead at just 4:17 thanks to Alex Cording scoring her third goal of the year, which was assisted by both Cassie Handrick and Margaret Harings. The Falcons managed to respond with a goal of their own to tie the match 1-1 at 11:33 in the first half. The goal was scored by Lizzy Bruder and Abby Soderholm had the assist. This was Bruder’s third goal of the season.

The Eagles managed to answer back before too long at 21:09 with a 2-1 lead thanks to Harings scoring her team-leading fourth goal of the year and Maggie Edmark getting the assist. At halftime, the Eagles led by a score of 2-1 with a combined total of 21 shots for both teams (15 for UW-River Falls).

During the second half of the game, both teams were scoreless despite a total of 16 shots being taken with 10 of them coming from UW-L.

At the end of the game, UW-L managed to finish with 16 total shots on Saturday, including seven on goal. Cording totaled four of those shots while both Harings and Rachel Rogahn had three and Edmark had two.

The Falcons on the other hand managed to register 21 shots during the match, including eight of them on goal. Soderholm had a match-high six shots with two of them being on goal. Bruder and Kayla Windingstad each also had two shots on goal.

The player that really helped to secure the victory for the Eagles was Kennedy Brault, finishing the game with seven saves to help shut down the Falcons.

For UW-River Falls, Erica Cimochowski totaled five saves in the game.

Jason Murphy, the head coach for UW-L, said “We have a lot of newcomers this year, we expect them to carry a heavy load and they have done a great job for us up to this point.” Murphy went on to say, “We expect them to play and do the things we need them to do and they are really maturing quickly.” The Eagles are making quite a name for themselves this year with the solid start of a 7-3 season, and it should be exciting to see if they can translate this early success into success throughout the rest of the season.

UW-L will return again on Saturday, October 3 at UW-Eau Claire at 3 p.m.