Belmont women’s soccer redeemed itself with a 2-0 win and its fifth clean sheet of the season against Morehead State University at E.S. Rose Park on Thursday.
Junior Loren House netted a brace, scoring both goals in the first half to stack up her third and fourth points of the season.
“Since we lost our first conference game on Tuesday, I think we were all ready to kind of get back and redeem ourselves,” said House. “We’ve been working really hard on restarts.”
The first goal of the contest was assisted by sophomore Riley Casey, marking her first of the season. She helped set up the play for House to kick the ball into the net after pinballing against the penalty box around the 30-minute mark.
House’s second goal came 14 minutes later when senior Rachel Vernon sent a nearly perfect free kick to sophomore Natalie Haverland. Taking advantage of the situation in the danger zone, Haverland passed the ball to an open House who found the net with a high header.
Women’s soccer head coach Heather Henson believes the two goals were tremendous morale boosters going into the second half of the game.
“To come out in the first half and get two goals just continued to mount our confidence,” she said.
“We knew we had to keep our composure to try to break the pressure. They changed their system so we had to adapt a little bit, but it was about how we continued to play our game.”
The Bruins’ defense locked down the game, keeping Belmont’s fifth opponent this season from scoring.
The defending OVC Goalkeeper of the Week, graduate student Andrea Leitner, recorded five hard-earned saves in the game to continue her successful play.
Belmont is currently tied for first place in the conference, sharing the No. 1 spot with the University of Tennessee Martin, and stands with a 4-1 conference record and a 7-5-1 record overall.
The Bruins will travel to Eastern Illinois University to face off against the Panthers on Oct. 17 before heading to UT Martin for a rivalry game on Oct. 21.
The team’s final game of the regular season will be held Oct. 24 against Southern Illinois University Edwardsville on the E.S. Rose Park home field.
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PHOTO: Loren House (No. 18) celebrated by her teammates after one of her two goals against Morehead State University Thursday. Belmont Vision / Nikiah Perry
This article was written by A.J. Wuest.