Women's Soccer 'Fighting for their Lives'

J. Andrew Lockwood
Senior Editor / Columnist

After a slow start to conference play, Grant Serafy’s women’s soccer program is starting to regain the confidence and swagger they showed last year en route to their first regular season conference championship. Following a 1-1 Florida road trip to Jacksonville and North Florida, the Bears returned to Bear Field in front of their home crowd looking awfully impressive in a 0-0 tie against Belmont Friday night and with a 6-1 shellacking of Lipscomb.

The rivalry game against Belmont was another epic chapter of the battles between the two teams over the past few seasons. The Bruins and Bears gave it their all for 110 minutes, spanning regulation and two overtimes, yet no goals were scored resulting in the tie. Mercer had its share of goal-scoring opportunities for the night with Belmont goalkeeper Sari Lin collecting six saves on the evening, but still couldn’t convert the prime opportunities they were given into points.

Although they tied the league leading Bruins, Serafy still was a bit disappointed about not getting the win, saying afterwards, “I’m a little disappointed from a competitive standpoint. We didn’t mix it up like I thought we should have in our individual battles. We are fighting for our season here. I’m in need of some players who will step up and play best when the pressure is on. We are deep in conference play and need some victories.”

In response to Serafy’s quote after the Belmont game, Mercer handed out the most lopsided victory of the season as they defeated a talented and dangerous Lipscomb team 6-1. Within the first four minutes, the game was over as a result of Olivia Tucker’s 4th and 5th goals of 2009, both courtesy of Lauren Johnson passes. The rough start only continued to get worse for the Bison as Patricia-Anne Upson knocked another first half goal in for the Bears during the 17th minute off of a penalty kick to give Mercer the 3-0 lead going into the half.

As the old adage goes, ‘When it rains it pours,’ and so it also explains Mercer’s scoring efforts for the rest of the game. Olivia Tucker would pull a hat trick in the 75th minute with her third goal of the game while teammate Meghan O’Rourke would score two goals with four minutes of each other soon after. Lipscomb would finally get a score on the board when Danielle Bethke would knock a Meghan McGuire throw-in past Mercer goalie Jean Worts during the 82nd minute.

The goals came in bunches and easily gave Mercer the win on Sunday afternoon to bolster their standing in the conference. As always, Serafy was glad to get the win but saw room for improvement. “It was good to see us score some goals out there today and I thought we started off well,” Serafy said. He later added, “We just need to work on maintaining that intensity throughout the game. It was good to pick up the conference win and the three points [in the conference standings], but we are still fighting for games at this point.”

Fighting for their lives is a good description for the remaining schedule for the Bears. A road trip to Tennessee and South Carolina will pit them against ETSU and USC-Upstate before their final home game against Campbell October 22nd.