Stony Brook no challenge for W. Soccer

Goalie Katherine Hunt notched her fifth shutout this season in a 3-0 win. While Penn students may or may not know exactly where Rhodes Field is, very few would mistake the home of the Penn's women's soccer team for nearby Franklin Field, home of the Penn Relays and the Quakers football team. That, however, is exactly what happened to members of the Stony Brook women's soccer team yesterday afternoon. "We got lost coming in," Stony Brook coach Sue Ryan said. "We ended up at Franklin Field because we got directions there and then they were tarring the front of [the Rhodes Field] parking lot and we got locked on the highway, so we only had about a 10-minute warmup." The Sea Wolves (6-6) didn't have any better luck finding the back of the net, as the Quakers (7-2-1) ended up on the sunny side of a 3-0 shutout. It was the Red and Blue's third win in a row and the sixth win in their last seven games. It was also freshman goalie Katherine Hunt's fifth shutout of the year. "The Penn team did well," Ryan said. "They had some good transitions, good scoring chances and good goals. I think we had a slow start because we didn't have as good a warmup as we could've." The Quakers were able to control the ball for the majority of the first half; however, they got a lot more scoring chances in the second, despite the fact that they actually controlled the ball less. "I think the first half we did control the ball but we didn't play as well as we can," Penn coach Andy Nelson said. "In the second half we actually created more chances but I'm not sure that meant we actually had the ball more." The Quakers outshot the Sea Wolves 24-10, with 13 of those shots coming in the second half. "Sometimes when the other team has the ball a little bit, they start to come forward and it leaves more space behind, which creates more scoring chances even though you don't have the time of possession advantage," Nelson said. Despite a 1-0 Quakers lead at the half, Nelson used the break to express his dissatisfaction with his team. "I just told them the truth," he said. "They knew it, they knew we weren't playing well in the first half. We just weren't connecting very well, we were giving the ball away too much and we were thinking too slowly. So I just said, 'Look, I know you're trying it's just a matter of? playing together and doing the things we're good at.'" Nelson saw results less than a quarter of the way into the second half. "I thought that about 10 minutes into the half we were playing reasonably well," he said. "And they know they can still play a bit better." The Quakers could perhaps afford their not-quite-perfect play in the first half because they took the lead less than nine minutes into the game. At 8:32, senior forward Jill Callaghan took a crossing pass from Angela Konstantaras and hit a left-footed shot past Sea Wolves goaltender Lori Nelson, who would eventually stop 10 Quakers shots on the afternoon. In addition to giving the Quakers the lead, Callaghan's goal moved her into a tie with Darah Ross for second all-time on Penn's career points list. First place on the list belongs to Callaghan's sister, Andrea, who added a point to her total yesterday with an assist on the second goal of the game. That goal was scored by junior midfielder Kelli Toland, 3:07 into the second half. It was Toland's fourth goal of the year, which places her one goal away from her 1998 total with over one third of the Quakers schedule still remaining. Toland got in on the scoring action again when her corner kick was redirected beautifully into the net by a header from freshman forward Heather Taylor. "I wasn't even the first person to get a head on it," Taylor said. "[Freshman forward] Heidi Nichols got a head on it first and I just played it off of that." That cornerkick was a textbook example of what the Quakers have been working on in practice. "I just concentrated on driving the ball," Toland said. "Instead of hitting it high or near post, we're just supposed to drive it through the middle low and put it head-high at the six."