Almost one year after seeing their season come to an end at the hands of the Laurentian Lady Vees, the Carleton Ravens women’s soccer team got revenge Oct. 26 with a convincing 5-0 win in their first playoff match.
The Lady Vees eliminated the Ravens in the first round of the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) playoffs last season, making this year’s victory that much sweeter for the Ravens.
With the win, the Ravens move on to play the top-seeded Queen’s Golden Gaels in the quarter-finals Oct. 30 in Kingston.
“They did great today,” said Ravens head coach Alex McNutt following the game. “They all played well. The game plan was right today and we stuck to it and I think we wanted it more than them.”
Despite the cold weather, the Ravens came out much stronger than the Lady Vees, with striker Shayla LaVecchia opening the scoring in her last Ravens home game and star rookie Adrianna Ruggiero adding another from inside the six-yard box.
Fellow rookie Nicole Filipow opened the scoring in the second half, then Ruggiero showed why she led the team in scoring this season with a breakaway goal to make it 4-0.
The real story of the game came when Diane Jodoin, who normally plays defence, scored for the first time in five years as McNutt allowed her to play striker for the last part of the game.
It was an emotional moment for Jodoin, as it was also her last home game as a Raven.
“Better late than never,” said an exhausted Jodoin following the game. “It does feel really good. A little bit of a shock.”
Even though the Ravens didn’t have a perfect record against Laurentian this year, McNutt said he was confident the Ravens would come out on top.
“I had a sneaky feeling that we’d do well today,” he said. “We played them twice this year. We tied them [at home] but we were totally dominant. We just couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net.”
McNutt said he had the team work on correcting the shortfalls that happened in the draw against Laurentian, and it paid off.
“We’ve been working on finishing, we’ve been working on playing in the final third and we did everything right today,” McNutt said.
The Ravens dominated most of the match, but third-year goalkeeper Rachel Bedek made some key saves to earn the shutout.
“It feels great,” Bedek said. “We get to move on to the second round of the playoffs, so hopefully we can throw a big upset against Queen’s.”
The Golden Gaels won the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) championship last season, and are the top-seeded team in the East again this year. They defeated the Ravens 4-0 and 2-0 in both meetings this season.
“It’s going to be tough,” Jodoin said. “We’re going to have to play smart, they’re really fast. It’ll be tough but we have a few days to prepare for it, and I think that we could do it if we really want to.”
Bedek said although Queen’s is a very physical team with a strong group of strikers, she’s still confident in the Ravens’ chances.
“We’ve always been stepping up our game throughout the season so I think they’re in for a fight.”
