Last weekend the Ferris State Bulldogs had thrilling and heartbreaking double overtime games in which they were unable to come up with a win.
This past Friday, the story changed for the Bulldogs when sophomore forward Stephanie Garland netted a goal in the 97th minute of the match between Madonna and Ferris, by heading home a corner kick in overtime. Ferris improved its record to 1-1-1 on this young season after defeating Madonna 3-2.
After a 0-0 first half, the Bulldogs scored quickly when freshman forward Casey Shauman scored off of a penalty kick opportunity, tallying her second goal of the season. Shauman also put up a total of five shots with four of them directed toward the net. Following the Ferris goal, Madonna responded within minutes to tie the game up at one a piece.
Madonna lucked out when Ferris mistakenly put in an own goal, dropping the Bulldogs to a 2-1 deficit. In the 78th minute, freshman forward Nicole Boehnke scored the equalizer before Garland put Madonna away in extra time.
“This first win was great for us because our first two games went into overtime as well, but we didn’t get the results we wanted. So winning this game in overtime meant a lot, and we also got redemption against a team we lost to last year,” sophomore midfielder Leanne Boehm stated.
The Bulldogs struggled early on in this game, but in the second half really came to play by dominating the shot totals by a final advantage of 17-11 with 10 of those shots on net and also holding a 4-0 shot advantage in the short overtime period.
Ferris wouldn’t give up, as Boehm went on to say, “We started off really slow but we really wanted to win this game so everyone worked really hard and didn’t stop fighting and it finally paid off.”
Junior goaltender Rachel McCollum stopped five shots en route to the Bulldogs’ first victory and, besides the fluke own goal, had a very solid outing for Ferris.
Next for the Ferris women’s soccer team is a non-league matchup against arch-rival Grand Valley State University Wed., Sept. 12, and the team’s goal for the upcoming portion of the season is just to “keep winning.”
Now that the first one is out of the way hopefully Ferris can keep piling them on, and there is no tougher test to find out where the team is at than playing the strong Lakers team. n