ERIE, Pa. – The Slippery Rock University women's soccer team suffered a narrow 1-0 loss at Mercyhurst University Tuesday in the quarterfinals of the 2022 Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Tournament.
The loss moves Slippery Rock's record to 7-4-8 on the season overall while Mercyhurst improves to 10-5-4 on the year and advances to Friday's semifinal round, where it will face West Chester University.
SRU's offense was led by
Sydney Patrick and
Ashley Rea, who each placed one shot on goal, while
Faith Diffenbacher and
Skylar Munnikhuysen both tallied a pair of off-target attempts. Rounding out Rock players to record a shot were
Maddie DeLucio and
Libby Zacharyasz with one each.
Emma Yoder made two saves while allowing one goal over the duration of Tuesday's match. Yoder, the program's all-time leader in saves, ends the 2022 season with 249 career saves.
The Lakers scored what would be the game-winning goal in the 27th minute of the opening half of competition when Karah Van Horn delivered a pass to Amber Thomas, who laid in a cross-goal shot out of reach of Yoder to give Mercyhurst a 1-0 advantage it would never relinquish.
Slippery Rock's best look at an equalizer came under a minute after the Lakers' goal when at 26:41 Rea fired a shot that was barely stopped by Mercyhurst goalkeeper Maddie Elbro to preserve the shutout heading into halftime.
Coming out of the break, neither team managed much offense as neither goalie was tasked with making more than two saves throughout the remainder of the game.
Slippery Rock controlled the offensive possession and outshot Mercyhurst 5-3 over the final 45 minutes of competition, but was unable to pull off a late comeback as each attempt was successfully defended by Elbro and the Lakers' backline.
For the game, Mercyhurst posted advantages over The Rock in shots on goal (3-2) and corners (7-5), while both teams ended the match even in total shots (8-8).
With Slippery Rock not mentioned in the latest set of regional rankings, it is likely that Tuesday's loss will end the 2022 season for The Rock, which brings an end to a 26th consecutive winning season.
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