The Carleton Ravens women’s soccer team was able to pull through with a 2-1 win over the Royal Military College (RMC) Paladins in their home opener at Keith Harris Stadium.
The light mood cast by the renewal of the soccer season was darkened in a scary moment when an RMC player’s foot and fifth-year keeper Anna Morsky’s head made contact in the Ravens’ crease.
After a tense moment, Morsky was stabilized in a neck brace and taken off on a stretcher and into a waiting ambulance.
This is the second injury the team has had to deal with in recent weeks. During the Ravens’ first road trip to Toronto on Aug. 31, first-year midfielder Alyssa Johnston suffered a broken arm on the field against the University of Toronto Varsity Blues.
After Morsky was taken off the field, there was time remaining on the clock and a 2-1 Carleton lead at stake.
“We should’ve just finished it in the first half,” Ravens head coach Alex McNutt said. “We’ve been creating a lot of chances, you could see in the first half today.”
In the first half of this match, the Ravens showed great ball control, attacking well moving up the field, and holding the momentum of the game. This resulted in two goals from third-year midfielder Nicole Filipow.
The Ravens entered the second half up 2-0 but from then on, McNutt said his team did not bring the same level of play they exhibited in the first.
“It was a game of two halves as they say,” he said.
McNutt said he used the second half as an opportunity to give some new faces the chance to gain some valuable playing time and show what they can do.
Part of the reason, he said, was to rest some of his veteran players’ legs, in preparation for their first meeting with cross-town rival, the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees on Sept. 11.
“You make changes in a game and it either lifts things or it has an opposite effect,” McNutt said.
As the match winded down, RMC put on the pressure and nearly scored on a two-on-none opportunity in the Ravens crease to even up the score.
Team captain Briana De Souza said they did not expect to play such a close match.
“I think they’ve definitely improved a bit, but as always we expect them to come out hard and they did and we didn’t have the physicality we should’ve,” De Souza said.
“I think with Anna getting injured our focus kind of dipped a bit,” Ravens midfielder Alexandria Druggett said.
Carleton’s record now moves to 3-1-0, after this game and the 1-0 loss to the Queen’s University Gaels Sept. 4, which was the team’s first loss of the season.
Coach McNutt said he has no intention of altering his game plan for their match against the Gee-Gees.
