Soccer: Panthers have a tough road

This Friday, the University of Pittsburgh women’s soccer team will test their mettle against… This Friday, the University of Pittsburgh women’s soccer team will test their mettle against some stiff competition on their home field.

In this year’s Pitt Soccer Classic, which begins on Friday at 5 p.m, Penn State will square off against North Carolina State to see who will make the finals and play against the winner of the 7:30 p.m. game, which features Pitt against Colorado College. The Championship game will be played at 2 p.m. on Sunday, with the consolation game slated for 11:30 a.m.

“It’s going to be a challenge for sure; we set our schedule up that way,” head coach Sue-Moy Chin said. “The games are going to be tough and we need to step up.”

Penn State enters the weekend sporting a 3-1 record. Despite the season opening with a rough 4-0 defeat to No. 2 Stanford, the Nittany Lions have ripped off three consecutive multi-goal shutouts, blanking Nevada 4-0, West Virginia 5-0 and Richmond 3-0. The Nittany Lions are led by Maya Hayes, who has four goals on the year. Following her are Taylor Schram and Jess Rosenbluth, who both have two goals and two assists.

North Carolina State enters the tournament undefeated at 4-0 after displaying stellar defense and goalkeeping thus far. They have three 1-0 victories on their record, including wins over Virginia Commonwealth, Navy and LSU. Their third victory over Old Dominion went to overtime, before the Wolfpack exploded for 3 goals to seal a 4-1 victory. The Wolfpack is led by standout goalkeeper Kim Kern, who sports a miniscule .26 goals-against average and a .950 save percentage.

Colorado College limps into the tournament with a 1-3 record after defeats at the hands of the University of Colorado (5-0), University of Denver (2-1) and Utah State (2-1). Their only victory was a 1-0 shutout of Jacksonville State.

Pitt enters with a 1-2-1 record. They opened the year with a 2-0 loss to Ohio University and a 2-2 (2 OT) tie against Eastern Michigan before they participated in the James Madison Invitational this past weekend. Their 6-0 loss to James Madison came before winning their first contest of the year, a 1-0 victory over Delaware.

Pitt will spend this week in practice improving on aspects they found lacking in their tournament over the weekend.

“This week will be hard,” senior midfielder Katie Ruhe said. “We will focus on a lot of things we did wrong over the weekend, like one-v-one defending and clearing balls out of our zone.”

Coach Chin added to that, saying “We did good organizing our back four with our midfielders on Sunday, but we need to continue to be sound defensively and dangerous attackers. We will work on getting our personnel sorted, on one-v-one situations, attacking the final third and getting to the goal.”

Junior Ashley Cuba offered a much simpler approach.

“We just need to keep our heads,” she said. “We need to play with our instincts and stop thinking so much. We’re a young team and we just need to keep our focus and continue improving.”