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Penn women's soccer beats St. Joes 1-0. Penn 17 Ursula Lopez-Palm Credit: Katie Rubin

Before the women’s soccer team could set their sights on an Ivy League championship, the Quakers first needed to turn their attention to Lehigh.

Despite a slow start, Penn managed to sail past the Mountain Hawks, 2-0, in its final non-conference game of the season.

The Penn and Lehigh defenses both exhibited grit and an aggressive play that forced a scoreless first half.

Both sides suffered from sluggish starts — Lehigh (8-3-4) only managed three shots in the first 45 minutes, while the Quakers fired four.

“In the first half I was disappointed and thought we could get more out of the girls,” Penn coach Darren Ambrose said. “But in the second half, I thought we played well and corrected our mistakes.”

As Ambrose had hoped, the Quakers (8-6-1, 3-1-1 Ivy) came out in the second half looking sharper and playing with more energy.

In the 53rd minute, freshman forward Kerry Scalora took a long-range shot that bounced off the Lehigh goalie’s hands and into the net, putting the Quakers on the board.

Toward the end of the game, the Red and Blue earned another goal when junior Ursula Lopez-Palm headed a ball off the right post that bounced into the net.

Penn has now notched shutouts in four straight matches for the first time since the end of the 1999 season, when the team blanked its final five opponents.

Though Penn played like a team poised to capture the Ivy title, Ambrose still has expectations for his squad to improve.

“There are only one or two things we need to shape up and work on before we play Brown and Princeton,” he said.

Tied for first with Columbia, Penn must now win its last two games to stay in the driver’s seat.

“They know what they are playing for,” Ambrose said of his squad. “It’s a great position to be in, to have the conversation of being in first place and controlling your own destiny. Now we must go and get it.”

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