Eagles Shutout Soccer ‘Birds in Home Opener Loss

Image courtesy of Redbirds Athletics

NORMAL, Ill.- The first home game of the season for the Illinois State University women’s soccer team took place against Eastern Michigan on Sunday, with the Redbirds losing 4-0.

The first half of the match was close, and Eastern Michigan scored their first goal with less than two minutes left. Once the second half started the Redbirds started to shoot the ball, making up for nine of their twelve shots.

This was only Marisa Kresge’s second game as head coach of the soccer team. Kresge has new ideas going forward to evolve the program during her tenure.

“The biggest thing we need to figure out is what type of team we want to be this year, and what type of program we’re going to be moving forward.” Kresge said, “we had a game plan to switch point of attacks, speed of play was important, and we didn’t see any of those things today. Moving forward we are going to have to decide what we are willing to do to be successful.”

The Redbirds had recently lost to the University of Illinois. Going into this game against Eastern Michigan the team and the coaches were hoping to get into the win column, but luck was against them.

“We had a lot of higher expectations, we had a good performance.” Kresge said, “I thought against Illinois, holding them for 84 minutes without giving up a goal showed our toughness. We were pretty relentless with our defensive ability…Today our effort wasn’t there, the focus wasn’t there in the details. We have to look at it as a staff…did we not organize and prepare them correctly?”

The Redbird will play again on August 25 against Utah State.