By: Jay Ashdown
The Canisius women’s soccer team looked to close out what could’ve been a good building block game against a strong 4–1–0 Manhattan Jaspers team on Saturday. Unfortunately, the team failed to close out the regulation period, and Manhattan’s Julia Nicholas scored her second goal of the game with 18 seconds remaining, putting the nail in the Griffs’ coffin.
The Griffins controlled the pace of play for a good chunk of the game, finding ways to create multiple scoring chances on Manhattan goalkeeper Kim Mains. They finally opened the scoring in the 22nd minute of the match when they were awarded a penalty kick. Tiani Fonoti found the back of the net, striking it beautifully into the bottom corner past Mains for her second goal of the season.
Nicholas tied the contest in the 36th minute of the match when she received a pass from Sydney Harwood on the right side of the box and turned and put the ball into the top left corner of the net.
The two teams continued to battle, going back and forth trading chances, and finally Manhattan potted the back-breaking tally. Nicholas’s second of the game came from her racing downfield and collecting the ball on the right side, before striking a shot that found its way into the top right corner to give the Jaspers the victory.
Despite the hard-fought effort against a very good team, the magnitude of the way they lost was significant, and in order for this team to bounce back, they will have to have a short memory.
While the loss may be stunning and painful to some, head coach Ryan Louis is keeping a positive attitude and liked what he saw from his club.
"I think if we took our chances when we had them, the result would have been a little different,” Louis explained to GoGriffs.com. “We wanted to focus on being better with the ball and I think we showed that today. When we are taking over the game, we need to capitalize and take our chances."
Canisius did get more shots on target than Manhattan, owning 10 of the 16 shots on goal in the game. Fonoti had four shots on goal in the loss, which became her new career high, and sophomore Emma Oliphant put three shots on net as well. The Griffs hope to build on the many positives from this game, and shake off the disappointing end result to the game as they take on Iona September 25 at the Demske Sports Complex.