The women’s soccer team ended their 2012 campaign on a high note as the team handed La Salle their first draw of their season in a 0-0 double overtime match on Sunday, Oct. 28.
The Senior Day match originally scheduled for 1 p.m. was moved to 11 a.m. in preparation for Hurricane Sandy, the earliest match for the Owls all season.
“We were fantastic,” coach Matt Gwilliam said. “We really rebounded from Friday and we got back to our roots of being really good defensively. Our team really competed and I am proud of them.”
Starting the game in goal for Temple was senior goalkeeper Gillian Kacsuta, her first start of the 2012 season. Kacsuta played the first half, recording five saves on 10 La Salle shots.
“It was kind of an emotional start for me,” Kacsuta said. “It was not only me that recorded the first half shutout, it was all of us. The defense kept me in it and I kept them in it as well.”
Senior goalkeeper Tara Murphy stepped in for Kacsuta after the first half to preserve the Temple shutout for the second half and both overtime periods. Murphy recorded 10 saves on 28 shots in 65 minutes of play in her last game as an Owl.
“Honestly, it was a team effort,” Murphy said about the shutout. “[Temple] had girls saving balls off the line too and it was just the fact that everyone worked for each other today and that’s how we came out with the shutout.”
The shutout recorded on Sunday is Temple’s seventh of the season, which marks Owl’s goalkeeper Tara Murphy fourth all-time in shutouts for goalkeepers.
While both teams had their chances to score, neither team was able to finish their timely offensive opportunities, Gwilliam said.
“It was a very physical game on both ends,” senior midfielder Kate Yurkovic said. “We are both Philly schools so it is always a bigger rivalry than normal and everyone played for everyone else today. It was the last time a lot of us will play competitively so it was a good way to go out and everyone was in good spirits.”
In the match, the Owls were out-shot by the Explorers 38 to 15. The Explorers also recorded three times as many shots on goal as the Owls with 15 to Temple’s five shots on goal.
With the tie Sunday, Temple ends the season with a 5-12-3 record overall (2-6-1 in A-10), while La Salle will enter the A-10 tournament with a regular season record of 14-4-1 (8-0-1 in A-10).
“Everyone went 100 percent throughout the entire game,” Murphy said. “To see that everyone was really playing for each other today was really great,” Murphy said.
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